ISRAEL KEEPS UP MILITARY PRESSURE
Meanwhile, Israeli forces kept up military pressure on the Palestinian enclave. Medics said Israeli military strikes killed at least 24 people across Gaza Strip on Wednesday.
One of the strikes targeted a school sheltering displaced families in Gaza City’s suburb of Sheikh Radwan, they added.
The Israeli military said it struck a Hamas militant operating in the area of Al-Furqan in Gaza City.
Several Palestinians were killed and wounded in the Al-Mawasi area, an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, where the military said the strike targeted another Hamas operative operating there.
The ministry of health in the Hamas-run Gaza said Israeli forces continued to besiege the only three hospitals, barely operational in the northern edge of the enclave, surrounding Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia.
The Israeli army forced officials at the Indonesian hospital to evacuate patients and staff on Tuesday and continued to operate in the vicinity of the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital. They also ordered that the hospital be evacuated but officials there refused, citing risks to dozens of patients.
Israeli troops were operating in the vicinity of the hospital for the past two days and an Israeli security official said the area was a Hamas stronghold.
“Kamal Adwan is at the heart of the most complex fighting in Jabalia,” he said. “We are being very careful.”
Palestinians accuse Israel of seeking to permanently depopulate northern Gaza to create a buffer zone, which Israel denies
The war was triggered by Hamas’ Oct 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza has since killed more than 45,200 Palestinians, according to health officials in the Hamas-run enclave. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced and much of Gaza is in ruins.