Israel kills at least 66 Palestinians in Gaza

An Israeli strike killed at least 30 Palestinians and wounded 50 others who were sheltering in a post office in central Gaza Strip, bringing the death toll on Thursday in the enclave to 66. 

With no sign of let-up in the 14-month-old conflict, the strike hit a postal facility in Nuseirat camp where displaced families had sought refuge and also damaged several nearby houses, medics told Reuters.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Nuseirat is one of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic camps originally for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war around the establishment of Israel. Today, it is part of a dense urban area crowded with displaced people from throughout the enclave.

Earlier on Thursday, two Israeli strikes in southern Gaza killed 13 Palestinians who Gaza medics and Hamas said were part of a force protecting humanitarian aid trucks. Israel's military said they were Hamas militants trying to hijack the shipment.

Many of those killed in the attacks on Rafah and Khan Younis had links to Hamas, according to sources close to the group.

The Israeli military said in a statement the two airstrikes aimed to ensure the safe delivery of humanitarian aid and accused Hamas members of planning to prevent the aid from reaching Gaza civilians who need it.

The statement said the Hamas members aimed to hijack the aid "in support of continuing terrorist activity".

Armed gangs have repeatedly hijacked aid trucks, and Hamas has formed a task force to confront them. The Hamas-led forces have killed over two dozen members of the gangs in recent months, Hamas sources and medics said.

Hamas said Israeli military strikes have killed at least 700 police tasked with securing aid trucks in Gaza since the war began on Oct. 7, 2023. It has accused Israel of trying to protect looting and "creating anarchy and chaos to prevent aid from reaching the people of Gaza".

Separately, the Israeli military on Thursday ordered residents of several districts in the heart of Gaza City to evacuate, saying it would respond to rockets launched from those areas.

"This is a pre-warning before an attack," read a military statement posted on X that some residents also received as text and audio alerts on their mobile phones.

The evacuation orders caused a new wave of displacement. At nightfall, dozens of families streamed out of the areas heading toward the centre of the city.

Israeli bombings of a residential building in Gaza City's al-Jalaa Street and a house west of Nuseirat killed 22 people, medics and the Palestinian news agency WAFA said.

In the northern Gaza refugee camp of Jabalia, where the army has operated since October, health officials said an orthopaedic doctor, Saeed Judeh, was shot dead by Israeli forces while on his way to Al-Awda Hospital where he usually treated patients.

The health ministry said his death raised to 1,057 the number of healthcare workers killed since the war began.

Months of ceasefire efforts by Arab mediators, Egypt and Qatar, backed by the United States, have failed to conclude a deal between the two warring sides.

On Wednesday, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly voted to demand an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire and the immediate release of all hostages seized in Israel in October 2023 and held by Hamas in Gaza.

The war in the Palestinian enclave began after Hamas gunmen stormed into Israeli communities, killing around 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages back to Hamas-run Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

Since then, Israel's military has levelled swathes of Gaza, driving nearly all of its 2.3 million people from their homes, giving rise to deadly hunger and disease and killing more than 44,800 people, according to Palestinian health authorities.