CAIRO: Israeli forces stepped up airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing at least 40 people, Palestinian medics said, in further battle with Hamas fighters as Israel braced for potential wider war in the region.

Israeli airstrikes hit a cluster of houses in central Gaza’s Al-Bureij camp, killing at least 15 people, and the nearby Al-Nuseirat camp, killed four, medics said.

Israeli aircraft also bombed a house in the heart of Gaza City in the north, killing five Palestinians, while another airstrike in the southern city of Khan Younis killed one person and wounded others, according to medics.

Later on Thursday, 15 Palestinians were killed and 30 injured in Israeli bombings of two schools east of Gaza City, the territory’s Civil Emergency Service said in a statement.

Houthis vow response to Israeli attacks with allies in region

Footage circulated on social media showed casualties being brought to a hospital on donkey carts.

The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they were firing anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs at Israeli forces operating across Gaza, causing deaths and injuries among them.

Israel’s military said it had struck dozens of military targets across Gaza over the past 24 hours, including rocket launching pads.

Since Oct 7 last year, at least 39,699 Palestinians have been killed, including 22 within the past 24 hours, and 91,722 injured in Israel’s devastating air and ground war in Gaza, the Gaza health ministry said in an update on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Yemen’s Houthis will coordinate with other members of the ‘Axis of Resistance’ in any joint operation, the group’s leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said on Thursday, using the name that Iran and its regional allies use for groups aligned with Tehran. He said any decision to respond to Israeli attacks would be made by the axis as a whole.

More burials

On Thursday, dozens of Palestinians rushed into Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis to bid farewell to slain relatives before carrying them away for burials.

Reuters footage showed relatives moving out the bodies of their loved ones in plastic bags with names written on them, and holding special prayers before the funerals.

The Israeli military renewed evacuation orders to Palestinian residents in several districts in eastern Khan Younis, saying it would act forcefully against fighters who had unleashed rockets from those areas.

The army posted the evacuation order on X, and residents said they had received text and audio messages. Residents said dozens of families had begun to leave their homes and head west towards Al-Mawasi, a humanitarian-designated area but one that is overcrowded by displaced families from around the enclave.

On Thursday, the World Central Kitchen, a US-based, non-governmental humanitarian agency, said that a Palestinian staff member, Nadi Sallout, had been killed while apparently off duty on Wednesday near Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza.

Published in Dawn, August 9th, 2024