DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli airstrikes pounded northern and southern Gaza on Wednesday, killing at least 70 people, including almost two dozen children, according to local hospitals and health officials, a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there was “no way” he would halt Israel’s offensive in the Palestinian territory before Hamas is defeated.
At least 50 people, including 22 children, were killed in strikes around Jabaliya in northern Gaza alone, according to hospitals and Gaza’s Health Ministry.
The strikes came after Hamas on Monday released an Israeli-American hostage, a gesture that some thought could lay the groundwork for a ceasefire, and as U.S. President Trump visited Saudi Arabia during a multi-day trip to Gulf countries.
Israel’s military refused to comment on the strikes. It warned Jabaliya residents to evacuate late Tuesday, citing militant infrastructure in the area, including rocket launchers.
In Jabaliya, rescue workers smashed through collapsed concrete slabs using hand tools, lit by the light of cellphones, to remove children’s bodies.
In comments released by Mr. Netanyahu’s office Tuesday, the prime minister said Israeli forces were days away from a promised escalation of force and would enter Gaza “with great strength to complete the mission … It means destroying Hamas.”
There had been widespread hope that Mr. Trump’s visit to the Middle East could usher in a ceasefire deal or renewal of humanitarian aid to Gaza. An Israeli blockade of the territory is now in its third month.
The war began when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in a 2023 intrusion into southern Israel. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 52,928 Palestinians, many of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were combatants. Almost 3,000 have been killed since Israel broke a ceasefire on March 18, the ministry said.
Israel’s offensive has obliterated vast swathes of Gaza’s urban landscape and displaced 90% of the population, often multiple times.
Israeli media reported that one target in a strike on a hospital in Khan Younis on Tuesday was Mohammed Sinwar, younger brother of the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by Israeli forces last October. The military would not comment beyond saying it had targeted a Hamas “command and control center” which it said was located beneath the European Hospital.
Mohammed Sinwar is believed to be Hamas’ top military leader in Gaza. Israel has tried to assassinate him multiple times over the past decades.
Nearly half a million Palestinians are facing possible starvation while 1 million others can barely get enough food, according to findings by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a leading international authority on the severity of hunger crises.
French President Emmanuel Macron strongly denounced Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to put a blockade around Gaza as “a disgrace” that has caused a major humanitarian crisis.
“I say it forcefully, what Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is doing today is unacceptable,” Macron said Tuesday evening on TF1 national television. “There’s no medicine. We can’t get the wounded out. Doctors can’t get in.”
Gaza’s population of around 2.3 million people relies almost entirely on outside aid to survive. Israel’s 19-month-old military campaign has wiped away most capacity to produce food in the territory. Markets are empty of most items, and prices for what remains have skyrocketed.. Israeli officials have asserted there is enough food in the territory after a surge in aid entered during the recent two-month ceasefire.
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