Strikes kill 47 in Gaza as Unrwa chief says Israeli bulldozers damaged West Bank office

Israeli strikes killed 47 Palestinians and injured dozens overnight, most of them children and women, in the central Gaza Strip, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported on Friday.
The attacks occurred in the city of Deir Al-Balah, the Nuseirat camp and the town of Al-Zawayda, it said.
The Israeli military said its troops had identified and eliminated “several armed terrorists” in central Gaza and had eliminated “dozens of terrorists” in targeted raids in northern Gaza’s Jabalia area.
The Gaza war began after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on October 7th, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and reduced most of the enclave to rubble, Palestinian authorities say.
At least 46 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, mostly in the north where one attack hit a hospital, torching medical supplies and disrupting operations, the enclave’s health officials said.
Israel’s military has accused the Palestinian militant group Hamas of using Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya for military purposes and said “dozens of terrorists” have been hiding there. Health officials and Hamas deny the assertion.
The ministry for health in the Gaza Strip called for all international bodies “to protect hospitals and medical staff from the brutality of the [Israeli] occupation”.
Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said on Thursday that one of its doctors at the hospital, Mohammed Obeid, had been detained last Saturday by Israeli forces. It called for the protection of him and all medical staff who “are facing horrific violence as they try to provide care”.
In Lebanon, Israel carried out air strikes early on Friday on Beirut’s southern suburbs, the first strikes there in nearly a week.
Elsewhere in the region, Israeli bulldozers damaged the office of United Nations aid agency Unrwa in the West Bank’s Nur Shams camp on Thursday, the agency’s chief said, with Israel disputing his account in the latest exchange between both sides.
Philippe Lazzarini, who heads the UN Palestinian refugee agency, said on social media platform X that the office was severely damaged and was no longer usable.
The Israeli military, however, issued a statement denying responsibility for any damage to the building.
“The claim that the Unrwa offices in Nur Shams were destroyed by IDF soldiers is false,” the statement read, in reference to Israel Defense Forces.
“Terrorists planted explosives in the proximity of the Unrwa offices that were then detonated in an attempt to harm IDF soldiers. The explosives likely caused damage to the structure,” the IDF statement said.
On Monday, Israel passed a law banning Unrwa from operating in the country, legislation that could impact its work in war-torn Gaza.
The lawmakers who drafted the legislation cited what they described as the involvement of some Unrwa staffers in the October 7th, 2023, attack on southern Israel and staffers having membership in Hamas and other armed groups.
The UN, after an investigation, said in August that nine Unrwa staff were possibly involved in the October 7th attacks and fired them. Unrwa says the overwhelming majority of its staff adheres to its principles of neutrality.
Lazzarini called the vote to ban Unrwa a “dangerous precedent” that opposes the U.N. charter and violates Israel’s obligation under international law.
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Unrwa workers “involved in terrorist activities” must be held accountable. – Reuters