Israeli airstrikes kill dozens of Palestinian civilians across Gaza | Gaza News

Israeli forces have killed dozens of Palestinian civilians in nighttime attacks across the Gaza Strip.

At least 24 Palestinians were killed in air strikes on Gaza in the north of the enclave early Tuesday. Among those killed were 10 relatives of senior Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh, Gaza health officials said.

Two of the airstrikes hit schools in Gaza City, killing at least 14 people. Another attack in Shati camp, one of the eight historic refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, killed 10 people.

The house hit in this attack belonged to the extended family of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh. One of his sisters was killed along with other relatives.

Haniyeh, who lives in Qatar, heads Hamas’ diplomatic missions and is the public face of the group that controls the Gaza Strip. He has lost many relatives to Israeli airstrikes since the war began, including three sons.

The Israeli military said in a statement that its forces attacked militants involved in planning attacks on Israel in Gaza City overnight. It claimed that the targets included some who took part in the October 7 Hamas attacks and some who were involved in holding Israeli prisoners who were being taken to Gaza.

The Israeli Air Force attacked two buildings used by Hamas in Shati and Daraj Tuffah in the northern Gaza Strip. They “operated inside school premises used by Hamas as a shield for its terrorist activities,” the statement said.

Hamas denies using civilian facilities such as schools and hospitals for military purposes. In a statement, it described the attacks on the two schools and the house in Shati as a “massacre.”

“We hold the administration of US President Joe Boden responsible for the ongoing genocidal war against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip by continuing to provide political and military protection to the Zionist government and its criminal army,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, Israeli tanks also penetrated deeper into the western areas of the southern city of Rafah overnight and blew up houses, according to witnesses on the ground.

The armed wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad groups said in a joint statement that their fighters fired mortar shells at Israeli forces in the Yibna neighborhood in eastern Rafah overnight.

In nearby Khan Younis, several people were injured in a tent camp in the west of the city by an Israeli tank attack, paramedics said.

At least ten people were killed in an attack on people searching for aid in Khan Younis, including guards guarding aid trucks.

An air strike in central Gaza late Monday night killed five people, including four children, and injured at least ten others, hospital officials said.

The dead and injured were taken from the Maghazi refugee camp to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in nearby Deir el-Balah.