Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 103 people overnight into Sunday, hospitals and medics said, as Israel intensified its war in the territory after more than 19 months of fighting. The strikes also forced the main hospital in northern Gaza to close.
More than 48 people were killed in airstrikes in and around the southern city of Khan Younis, according to Nasser Hospital. Among the dead were 18 children and 13 women, a hospital spokesperson told the Associated Press.
In northern Gaza, a strike on a home in the built-up Jabaliya refugee camp killed nine people from a single family, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry’s emergency services. Another strike on a family’s residence, also in Jabaliya, killed 10, including seven children and a woman, according to the civil defense, which operates under the Hamas-run government.
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Gaza health officials said that fighting around the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza and an Israeli military “siege” prompted it to shut down.
The hospital was the main medical facility in the territory’s war-wrecked north, after northern Gaza’s previous main hospital, Kamal Adwan, was forced to stop serving Palestinians last year because of Israeli strikes, as was a second facility, Beit Hanoun Hospital.
The Israeli military did not have an immediate comment on the overnight strikes, but said troops were “operating against terror infrastructure sites in northern Gaza,” including in the area adjacent to the Indonesian Hospital, without providing more details.
The bloodshed followed the launch of a new operation aimed at putting more pressure on Hamas to release hostages.
Israel says the new offensive, named “Gideon’s Chariots,” includes plans to seize territory, displace hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to Gaza’s south and take control over the distribution of aid. It is also meant to ramp up pressure on the U.S.-designated Hamas terrorist group to agree to a temporary ceasefire on Israel’s terms – one that would free Israeli hostages held in Gaza but not necessarily end the war.
Hamas says it wants a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and a pathway to ending the war as part of any new ceasefire deal.
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Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said his negotiating team in the Qatari capital, Doha, was “working to realize every chance for a deal,” including one that would bring about an end to the fighting in exchange for the release of all the remaining 58 hostages, Hamas’ exile from Gaza and the disarmament of the Palestinian territory.
Hamas has refused to leave Gaza or disarm.
There is a renewed push by mediators from the U.S. and Qatar to reach a deal after President Trump’s visit to the Middle East last week, a source with knowledge of the talks confirmed to CBS News.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who spoke with Netanyahu on Saturday, told “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan that the United States is “actively engaged in trying to figure out if there is a way to get more hostages out through some ceasefire-type mechanism.”
“We’re not going to do anything to undermine Israel and its security but by the same token, if there is a possibility here to find a way forward that frees more hostages, including those who are alive but also the bodies to their relatives, and potentially bring about an end to this war in a way that puts the people of Gaza on a pathway of peace and prosperity and being free of Hamas, we’re going to explore that,” he said in an interview that will air Sunday.
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Rubio acknowledged that there has been some progress, without giving any details, and said Steve Witkoff, special envoy to the Middle East, is working on the issue on “an hourly basis.”
“It’s something we’re all very focused on and continue to be very supportive of,” Rubio said. “And I hope we’ll have good news soon in that regard but I think some impediments remain.”
The war in Gaza began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting 251 others. There are still 58 hostages in captivity after some of those hostages have been released in prisoner swaps, and roughly three dozen were killed. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children, according to the Hamas-led Gaza Health Ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants.
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