Israel strikes Gaza City suburb, say Palestinian medics

CAIRO: The Israeli military kept up the pressure on northern Gaza on Wednesday, striking in a suburb of Gaza City, medics said, and told residents in a central part of the enclave to evacuate from an area where Hamas fighters were firing rockets.

Air strikes in Shejaia, a suburb of Gaza City, killed at least eight Palestinians, according to local emergency services. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, and it was not immediately clear who was killed in the attack.

In al-Buriej, in central Gaza, the Israeli military said it struck a fighter operating in an area where rockets had been fired into Israel the previous day. Its Arabic spokesman had ordered people to leave the area before the strike.

The Palestinian news agency Wafa said two people were killed in that strike and 15 more in an airstrike in Jabalia. There was no immediate confirmation from Gaza health officials. Israel’s military said it killed Hamas fighters in the attack.

Much of the area around the northern towns of Beit Hanoun, Jabalia and Beit Lahiya has been cleared of people and razed, fuelling speculation, which Israel denies, that it intends to keep the area as a buffer zone after the fighting in Gaza ends.

Israel says its almost three-month-old campaign in northern Gaza is aimed at preventing Hamas fighters from regrouping. Its instructions to civilians to evacuate are meant to keep them out of harm’s way, the military said.

Palestinian and UN officials say no place is safe in Gaza and that evacuations worsen the humanitarian conditions of the population.

According to the Palestinian civil defence, more than 1,500 tents sheltering displaced people across Gaza were flooded by heavy rains over the past two days, leaving people exposed to the cold, their belongings damaged.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians, according to health officials in the Hamas-run enclave. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced and much of the tiny coastal strip is in ruins.

The war was triggered by Hamas’s Oct 7, 2023, attack on Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and another 251 taken hostage to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.