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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
World
Josh Salisbury

At least 17 dead as Israel ups military campaign in Gaza amid Lebanon ceasefire

Israeli military strikes killed at least 17 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, medics said, including in a strike at a refugee camp.

The bombardment came a day after Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah began a ceasefire in Lebanon, which had raised hopes among Palestinians in Gaza for a similar deal with Hamas, which rules Gaza.

Six people were killed in two separate air strikes on a house and near the hospital of Kamal Adwan in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, medics said, while four others were killed when an Israeli strike hit a motorcycle in Khan Younis in the south.

In Nuseirat, one of Gaza's eight historic refugee camps, Israeli planes carried out several air strikes, destroying a multi-storey building and hitting roads outside mosques.

At least seven were killed in those strikes, health officials said.

Medics said at least two people, a woman and a child, were killed in tank shelling that hit western areas of Nuseirat, while an airstrike killed five others in a house nearby.

In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, residents reported seeing tanks push deeper into the northwest area of the city.

A Palestinian woman mourns as she holds the body of a toddler killed in an Israeli strike, at Al-Ahli Arab hospita (AFP via Getty Images)

There has been no Israeli comment on the latest fighting.

Israel's 13-month campaign in Gaza aimed at eradicating Hamas has killed nearly 44,200 people and displaced much of the enclave's population.

The war was launched in response to a terror attack by Hamas-led fighters who killed around 1,200 people and captured more than 250 hostages in Israel on October 7, 2023.

Months of efforts to negotiate a ceasefire have so far not proved successful, and negotiations are now on hold.

Mediator Qatar has suspended its efforts until the sides are prepared to make concessions.

A ceasefire in the parallel conflict between Israel and Hamas' Lebanese ally Hezbollah took effect before dawn on Wednesday, bringing a halt to hostilities there.

Announcing the deal on Tuesday, US president Joe Biden said he would now renew his push for an elusive agreement in Gaza, urging Israel and Hamas to seize the moment.

The Lebanon truce has renewed calls for ceasefire in Gaza among the enclave’s 2.3 million people.

"I hope a ceasefire will happen like it did in Lebanon... I just want to take my children to see my land, my house, to see what they did to us, I want to live in safety," Amal Abu Hmeid, a displaced woman in Gaza, told Reuters.

"God willing we will have a truce," she said.

"(Life) was beautiful (before the war)... Now there is nothing beautiful, it's all gone.

“Our houses are gone, our brothers are gone, and no one is left. Now we hardly get... one meal a day. We can’t even get bread.”

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