Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip on Friday left dozens dead and cut off communications between the outside world and one of the last functioning hospitals in the enclave’s north, according to the Gaza health ministry and the World Health Organization.
It was a day of bloodshed and destruction both in Gaza, where Israel has stepped up its campaign against the remnants of Hamas, and across Lebanon, where Israel is at war with Hezbollah. A barrage of Israeli airstrikes stretched from the Syrian border with Lebanon to Beirut, the capital, and the Israeli military said five of its soldiers were killed amid clashes with Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon.
In Gaza, the toll among Palestinians continued to climb with the Gazan Health Ministry reporting that Israeli forces had killed 38 people and injured dozens more in strikes in the southern city of Khan Younis, where residents said there were no warnings before the attacks. Witnesses said some of the dead were children, which appeared to be supported by videos and photos shared on social media, distributed by news agencies and verified by The New York Times.
The Israeli military said only that in an unspecified part of southern Gaza, it had “eliminated a number of terrorists from the air and ground and dismantled numerous terrorist infrastructure sites.”
Scores more people were reported killed this week in the northern reaches of the enclave, where the Israeli military is returning to fight a regrouped Hamas presence in some of the same areas where it had routed the group after invading the territory late last year.
The fighting in the north has been described by residents as intense and relentless, and this week, it forced the main emergency service in Gaza, which had been rushing to the site of airstrikes and pulling people from rubble, to cease all rescue operations in the north.
The director of the World Health Organization said on Friday that it had lost contact with staff at Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the last functioning hospitals in northern Gaza after the health ministry said Israeli troops had raided the facility. The ministry said that Israeli forces had stormed the hospital and were “detaining hundreds of patients, medical staff and some displaced people.”
The Israeli military announced that three soldiers were killed in northern Gaza on Friday, in addition to the five killed in Lebanon. The statement capped an unusually deadly 48 hours for Israeli troops, with at least 13 confirmed killed in operations against Hamas and Hezbollah.
With the broader region still anxiously anticipating Israeli retaliation against Iran for an Oct. 1 missile barrage — which, in turn, Tehran said had been payback for the killing of Hezbollah’s assassinated leader, Hassan Nasrallah — Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken was in London meeting with Arab diplomats, the last leg of a weeklong trip meant to de-escalate tensions.
Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, had sharp words for Israel after meeting with Mr. Blinken, calling Israel’s actions in northern Gaza “ethnic cleansing.”
“It’s getting worse, unfortunately, every time we meet,” Mr. Safadi said at a joint news conference with Mr. Blinken. “Not for lack of us trying, but because we do have an Israeli government that is not listening to anybody. And that has got to stop.”
The top United Nations human rights official, Volker Türk, said Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza could amount to “crimes against humanity,” one of his harshest comments yet on the matter.
In Lebanon, the Israeli bombing campaign is spread over a broad area. The military said on Friday that its air force had struck over 200 targets in the country over the past day and had killed a commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit. It also said it had continued to locate and destroy underground compounds used by Hezbollah along Israel’s northern border.
The Israeli air force has ramped up its bombing campaign in the southern outskirts of Beirut, in a densely populated cluster of neighborhoods where Hezbollah holds sway. The area, known as the Dahiya, was hit by intense Israeli airstrikes overnight, many of them without evacuation warnings.
The U.N. refugee agency said Friday that the Israeli military had also carried out airstrikes on two border crossings between Lebanon and Syria, disrupting routes used by hundreds of thousands of people to flee Israel’s bombardment.
One Israeli strike shut down a northern crossing at Jousieh, and another hit the Masnaa crossing point, Rula Amin, a spokeswoman for the agency, told reporters by video link from Amman, Jordan. It was at least the third time that the Masnaa crossing had been hit since Israel launched its invasion of Lebanon on Oct. 1.
The Israeli military confirmed in a statement that it had struck the Jousieh crossing, saying it was targeting Hezbollah infrastructure and a conduit for the Syrian military to transfer weapons into Lebanon. Previously, it has said that it struck the Masnaa crossing to destroy an underground tunnel used to transport weapons to Hezbollah.
U.N. agencies estimate that Israel’s invasion and bombardment of Lebanon have displaced 1.4 million people, around one-fifth of the country’s population, and that more than 430,000 people have crossed into Syria to escape the conflict. Around 70 percent of those leaving were Syrians who had previously fled the civil war in that country, according to the estimates.
Although Israeli airstrikes have killed much of Hezbollah’s top leadership, analysts say the group is far from incapacitated, and Israeli forces say they have confronted a resilient adversary.
Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, has continued to use territory it controls in Lebanon to launch strikes into Israeli territory. Since Israel last week killed the leader of Hamas, its ally, Hezbollah has carried out increasingly bold strikes, including a drone attack that damaged a property belonging to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
On Friday, two Israelis died from wounds sustained during a rocket barrage from Lebanon, according to Israel’s emergency service. The two were killed after a projectile struck the Arab town of Majd al-Krum in northern Israel, according to the Israeli military. The Israeli media identified them as two Arab citizens of Israel, a young man and a woman who were working in a vegetable shop in the town market when the rocket landed.
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