Israel steps up bombing of central Gaza, kills 26 people

Gaza [Palestine], December 1: Israeli military strikes killed at least 26 Palestinians
across the Gaza Strip, medics said, as forces stepped up their bombardment of central
areas and tanks pushed deeper into the north and south of the enclave.
The escalation came a day after Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah began a ceasefire in
Lebanon, halting more than a year of hostilities and raising hopes among many
Palestinians in Gaza for a similar deal with Hamas, which rules the enclave.
Israel's military campaign - with the avowed intent of eradicating Hamas militants after
the group's deadly raid on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 - has laid waste to the
enclave of 2.3 million people.
"I hope a ceasefire will happen like it did in Lebanon... I just want to take my children to
see my land, my house, to see what they did to us, I want to live in safety," said Amal Abu
Hmeid, a displaced woman in Gaza.
"God willing we will have a truce," she said, sitting in the courtyard of a school sheltering
displaced families in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
The courtyard was filled with dirt and water streamed in from where people did their
laundry. Clothes were airing outside classrooms as children played nearby.
"(Life) was beautiful (before the war)... Now there is nothing beautiful, it's all gone. Our
houses are gone, our brothers are gone, and no one is left. Now we hardly get... one
meal a day. We can't even get bread," Abu Hmeid told Reuters.
Announcing the Lebanon accord on Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden said he would
now renew his push for a ceasefire agreement in Gaza, urging Israel and Hamas to seize
the moment.
Months of efforts to negotiate a ceasefire have yielded scant progress, and negotiations
are now on hold.
The ceasefire in the parallel conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas,
took effect before dawn on Wednesday, bringing a halt to hostilities that had escalated
sharply in recent months and overshadowed the conflict in Gaza.
GAZA DEATHS
Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 44,200 people and displaced nearly all the
enclave's population at least once, Gaza officials say. Vast swathes of the territory are in
ruins.
On Thursday, the head of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA),
Philippe Lazzarini, said at least 70 percent of those killed in Gaza were women and
children.
He said the ongoing Israeli offensive in the northern edge of Gaza for the past seven
weeks has uprooted 130,000 people.
The Hamas-led militants who attacked southern Israeli communities 13 months ago,
triggering the war, killed some 1,200 people and captured more than 250 hostages,
Israel has said.
On Thursday, six people were killed in two separate airstrikes on a house and near the
hospital of Kamal Adwan in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, while four others
were killed when an Israeli strike hit a motorcycle in Khan Younis in the south, medics
said.
Later on Thursday, an Israeli air strike near a tent encampment housing displaced
families in eastern Khan Younis killed at least five people and wounded others, medics
said.
In Nuseirat, one of Gaza's eight historic refugee camps, Israeli planes carried out
several airstrikes, destroying a multi-storey building and hitting roads outside mosques.
At least 11 people were killed in those strikes, according to health officials at Al-Awda
Hospital in the camp.
They said in a statement that dozens of families were trapped in their homes after some
tanks advanced from the northern area of the camp and that ambulance vehicles were
unable to reach them because of continued tank fire.
Contacted by Reuters, the Israeli military said its forces were continuing to "strike terror
targets as part of the operational activity in the Gaza Strip".
In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, tanks pushed deeper into the northwest area of the
city, residents said.
Source: Fijian Broadcasting Corporation