Israeli strikes in southern, central Gaza kill more than 60 Palestinians, including in 'safe zone'

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli airstrikes killed more than 60 Palestinians in southern and central Gaza overnight and into Tuesday, including one that struck an Israeli-declared “safe zone” crowded with thousands of displaced people.

Airstrikes in recent days have brought a constant drumbeat of deaths of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, even as Israel has pulled back or scaled down major ground offensives in the north and south. Almost daily strikes have hit the “safe zone” covering some 60 square kilometers (23 square miles) along the Mediterranean coast, where Israel told fleeing Palestinians to take refuge to escape ground assaults.

Tuesday’s deadliest strike hit on a main street lined with market stalls outside the southern city of Khan Younis in Muwasi, at the heart of the zone that is packed with tent camps. Officials at Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital said 17 people were killed.

Apparently referring to the strike, the Israeli military said in a statement that it targeted a commander in Islamic Jihad’s naval unit west of Khan Younis. It said it was looking into reports that civilians were killed.

The attack hit about a kilometer (0.6 miles) from a compound that Israel struck on Saturday, saying it was targeting Hamas’ top military commander, Mohammed Deif. That blast, in an area also surrounded by tents, killed more than 90 Palestinians, including children, according to Gaza health officials. It is still not known if Deif was killed in the strike.

The new airstrikes came as Israel and Hamas continued to weigh the latest cease-fire proposal. Hamas has said talks meant to wind down the nine-month-long war would continue even after Israel targeted Deif. International mediators are working to push Israel and Hamas toward a deal that would halt the fighting and free about 120 hostages held by the militant group in Gaza.

Other strikes hit in the Nuseirat and Zawaida refugee camps of central Gaza. Strikes on four houses killed at least 24 people, including 10 women and four children. An Associated Press journalist saw the bodies, some wrapped in blankets and a floral sheet, as they were taken to Al Aqsa hospital in the nearby town of Deir al-Balah, where hospital officials provided the death count.

Another hit a U.N. school in Nuseirat where families were sheltering, killing at least nine. AP footage showed the school’s yard covered in rubble and twisted metal from a structure that was hit. Workers carried bodies wrapped in blankets, as women and children watched from the classrooms where they have been living.

Israel’s military said Hamas militants were operating from the school to plan attacks. Its claim could not be independently confirmed.

Other strikes in Khan Younis and the southern city of Rafah overnight Monday and on Tuesday killed 12 people, according to medical officials and AP journalists. An AP journalist counted the bodies at the hospital before a funeral was held at its gates.

The military said air force planes struck some 40 targets in Gaza over the past day, among them observation posts, Hamas military structures and explosives-rigged buildings.

The war in Gaza, which was sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, has killed more than 38,600 people, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The war has created a humanitarian catastrophe in the coastal Palestinian territory, displaced most of its 2.3 million population and triggered widespread hunger.

Hamas’ October attack killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and militants took about 250 hostage. About 120 remain in captivity, with about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.

Violence has also surged in the West Bank. On Tuesday a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli policeman, wounding him lightly, before another officer opened fire, killing the assailant who was identified as a 19-year-old from Gaza.

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