Key Points
- Palestinian officials say Israeli strikes have killed at least 72 people in Gaza since Thursday night.
- An attack in Gaza’s south killed 38, including 13 children from the same family, the Gaza health ministry said.
- Three journalists were killed in an Israeli strike in Lebanon, the reporters’ outlets said.
Israeli strikes have killed at least 72 people in Gaza since Thursday night, Palestinian officials say.
The health ministry in Gaza reported that Israeli airstrikes and shelling pounded the southern city of Khan Younis on Friday, killing 38 people — including 13 children from the same extended family — and wounding dozens.
In northern Gaza, health officials reported that Israeli forces had raided Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the few medical facilities still functioning in the area.
The Gaza health ministry said two children had died in the hospital’s intensive care unit after Israeli fire hit oxygen equipment and the hospital’s generators failed. The Israeli military said it was unaware of strikes in the area.
Earlier on Friday, the Israeli military said its forces were operating around the hospital in the Jabalia camp, where it launched a major operation earlier this month.
The Gazan ministry of health reported that Israeli troops on Friday rounded up medical staff and displaced people sheltering at the hospital and forced the men to strip, a common practice that Israel says is meant to ensure detainees do not conceal weapons.
The ministry said some Palestinians were detained, without specifying how many.
The Palestinian Civil Defence said that Israeli forces arrested two of its workers, including a local rescue coordinator and a firefighter.
The paediatric hospital is one of the area’s three medical facilities to remain somewhat operational after more than a year of war.
Since the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of the hospitals amid its renewed assault against Hamas militants in northern Gaza, doctors have warned that dire shortages of food, medicine and other supplies had triggered a humanitarian emergency.
The operation sparked fresh concerns about the war’s civilian toll, with United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk saying the conflict’s “darkest moment” was currently unfolding in northern Gaza.
Israel has renewed its offensive in Gaza’s north in recent weeks, and aid groups are sounding the alarm over dire humanitarian conditions.
Israeli attack kills three journalists in Lebanon
In Lebanon, Israeli strikes on the country’s southeast killed three journalists. The journalists killed as they slept in guesthouses were Ghassan Najjar and Mohamed Reda of the pro-Iranian news outlet Al-Mayadeen and Wissam Qassem, who worked for Hezbollah’s Al-Manar, the outlets said in separate statements. Several others were wounded.
Lebanon accused Israel of a “deliberate” attack on the journalists. The Israeli military maintained it had targeted Hezbollah militants and said that “the incident is under review”.
“This is a war crime,” Lebanese information minister Ziad Makary said.
At least 18 journalists from six media outlets, including Sky News and Al Jazeera, were using the guesthouses.
Sharing a post about the strike on X, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression Irene Khan wrote: “Deliberate killing of a journalist is a war crime.”
Palestinians inspect the remains of destroyed buildings following the Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Source: AAP, EPA / Haitham Imad
The Israeli military, which has said that troops are targeting Hamas fighters in Gaza’s south, did not respond to questions about Friday’s attack on several residential buildings. Palestinians said the neighbourhood was hit with no warning.
Footage from the Palestinian Civil Defence showed rescuers pulling the bloodied bodies of nine children from the al-Farra family out of the ruins.
The victims were taken to the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis as well as to the European Hospital, where records showed at least 15 members of the al-Farra family had been killed.
Six members of the Abdeen family were also killed, health officials reported.
WHO loses contact with staff at hospital
The World Health Organization said on Friday it lost touch with staff at Kamal Adwan, where some had been the night before to deliver supplies and help transfer patients to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
“This development is deeply disturbing given the number of patients being served and people sheltering there,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X about the loss of communication.
Kamal Adwan hospital director Hussam Abu Safiya could not be reached on Friday.
In voice messages sent late Thursday, Abu Safiya claimed that the hospital had come under Israeli tank fire. The Israeli military denied that a tank had fired at the hospital.
“Patients are still lying on the floors of the reception and emergency areas, with many in critical condition. There are no resources, supplies, or specialists to save these children’s lives,” Abu Safiya said in his voice message.
“We appeal to the world to intervene and preserve our hospitals.”
Since Israel’s assault on Gaza, more than 42,800 people have been killed in the enclave, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Hamas’ , which triggered the conflict, killed 1,200 people in Israel, with more than 250 taken hostage.
Last month, after nearly a year of rocket fire by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, Israel .
At least 1,580 people have been killed in Lebanon since all-out war erupted in September, according to an Agence France-Presse tally of Lebanese health ministry figures.
The Israeli military has announced the deaths of 32 soldiers since it began ground operations in Lebanon late last month.
