Palestinian officials say Israeli strikes have killed 22 people in northern Gaza

DEIR AL- BALAH: Israeli strikes on northern Gaza have killed at least 22 people, Palestinian medical officials said.

The Gaza Health Ministry's emergency service said that 11 women and two children were among those killed in the strikes late Saturday on several homes and buildings in the northern town of Beit Lahiya. It said another 15 people were wounded and that the death toll could rise.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Israel has been waging a massive air and ground offensive in northern Gaza for the last three weeks, after saying that Hamas militants had regrouped there. Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled to Gaza City in the latest wave of displacement in the yearlong war.

Israel is still carrying out daily strikes across Gaza, even as it wages war with the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon. On Saturday, Israeli warplanes attacked Iran — which backs both Hamas and Hezbollah — in response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack earlier this month.

The cascading conflicts have raised fears of an all-out regional war pitting Israel and the United States against Iran and its militant proxies, which also include the Houthi rebels in Yemen and armed groups in Syria and Iraq.

Israel says its strikes on Gaza only target militants, and it blames Hamas for civilian casualties because the militants fight in densely populated areas. The military rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.

The war began when Hamas-led militants blew holes in Israel's border wall and stormed into southern Israel in a surprise attack on October 7, 2023. They killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, around a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to the local Health Ministry. It does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count but says more than half of those killed were women and children.

The offensive has devastated much of the impoverished coastal territory and displaced around 90 per cent of its population, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands of people have crowded into squalid tent camps along the coast, and aid groups say hunger is rampant.