Israeli strike on hospital tent camp in Gaza kills 4 and ignites a fire that burns dozens

Palestinians survey damage at the site of an Israeli attack on tents sheltering displaced people, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, October 14, 2024. Photo courtesy: Reuters

Hospital records showed that four people were killed and 40 were injured. Twenty-five people were transferred to Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza after suffering severe burns, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

More than a year into the war, Israel is still carrying out almost daily attacks on the Gaza Strip, and carrying out a major ground offensive in the north, where it says militants have regrouped.

The war began when Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, while Palestinian militants kidnapped about 250 hostages. About 100 people are still being held inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed dead.

More than 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s counterattacks, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not say how many were fighters, but says more than half of the dead include women and children. About 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has been displaced by the war, often multiple times, and large areas of the coastal region have been completely destroyed.

Israel has ordered the entire remaining population of the northern third of Gaza, about 400,000 people, to move south and has not allowed any food to enter the north since the beginning of the month. At the beginning of the war thousands of people from the north followed Israeli evacuation orders and were not allowed to return.

This has led to fears among Palestinians that Israel intends to implement a plan devised by former generals in which it would order all civilians out of northern Gaza and label anyone remaining there as fighters – a surrender-or-starve strategy that rights groups say would violate international law. The plan has been presented to the Israeli government, but it is unclear whether it has been adopted.

With no end in sight to the war in Gaza, Israel is also waging an air and ground war in southern Lebanon against the Hezbollah militant group, which is an affiliate of Hamas and has been firing rockets into northern Israel for more than a year. Israel has also threatened to attack Iran in response to the ballistic missile attack, raising the possibility of war across the region.

Hezbollah air attack on army base Four soldiers were killed and seven others seriously wounded in northern Israel on Sunday, the army said, the deadliest attack by the militant group since Israel launched a ground invasion of Lebanon nearly two weeks ago.

Lebanon-based Hezbollah on Thursday called off the attack near the town of Binyamina in retaliation for Israeli attacks on Beirut that killed 22 people. It said it targeted Israel’s elite Golani Brigade, launching dozens of missiles to capture Israeli air defense systems during an attack by a “squadron” of drones.

Israel’s National Rescue Service said 61 people were injured in the attack. With Israel’s advanced air-defense systems, it is rare for so many people to be injured by drones or missiles.