Medics report 30 killed in Gaza as Israeli tanks retreat

Israeli military strikes killed at least 30 Palestinians overnight in the Gaza Strip, most of them in the Nuseirat camp at the centre of the enclave, medics said, after some tanks pulled back from an area they had raided.

Medics said they had recovered 19 bodies of Palestinians killed in northern areas of Nuseirat, one of the enclave's eight long-standing refugee camps.

The rest were killed in the northern and southern areas of the Gaza Strip, medics added.

There was no fresh statement by the Israeli military, but yesterday it said its forces were continuing to "strike terror targets as part of the operational activity in the Gaza Strip".

Some Israeli tanks remained active in the western area of the camp and the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said teams were unable to respond to distress calls from residents trapped inside their houses.

Dozens of Palestinians returned to areas where the army had retreated to check on damage to their homes. Some retrieved bodies of the dead.

Medics and relatives covered up dead bodies, including of women, that lay on the road with blankets or white shrouds and carried them away on stretchers.

Medics said an Israeli drone had killed Ahmed Al-Kahlout, head of the Intensive Care Unit at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, where the army has been operating since early October.

Mr Al-Kahlout was killed by a missile fired from the drone as he walked through the hospital gate, two medical officials at Kamal Adwan Hospital told Reuters.

Earlier in the week, the director of the hospital and 12 other medics were wounded in similar attacks, the Gaza health ministry said.

There was no immediate Israeli army comment.

Kamal Adwan Hospital is one of three medical facilities on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip that are now barely operational due to shortages of medical, fuel, and food supplies.

Health officials said most of its medical staff had been either detained or expelled by the Israeli army.

Displacements

The Israeli army said forces operating in Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia since 5 October aimed to prevent Hamas militants from regrouping and waging attacks from those areas.

Residents said the army was depopulating the towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun as well as the Jabalia refugee camp.

The head of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said yesterday that Israel's seven-week offensive in the northern edge of Gaza had uprooted some 130,000 people.

Meanwhile, Israeli authorities released around 30 Palestinians whom it had detained in the past few months during its Gaza offensive.

Those released arrived at a hospital in southern Gaza for medical checkups, medics said.

Freed Palestinians, detained during the war, have complained of ill-treatment and torture in Israeli detention after they were released. Israel denies torture.

Months of efforts to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza have yielded scant progress, and negotiations are now on hold.

A ceasefire in the parallel conflict between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, took effect before dawn on Wednesday, bringing a halt to hostilities that had escalated sharply in recent months and had overshadowed the Gaza conflict.

The US President Joe Biden said this week he would renew his push for a ceasefire agreement in Gaza and he urged Israel and Hamas to seize the moment.

Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed nearly 44,300 people and displaced nearly all the enclave's population at least once, Gaza officials say.

Vast swathes of the territory are in ruins.

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.

West Bank

Meanwhile a shooting at a bus near an Israeli settlement injured at least eight people in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli rescue service said.

Violence in the West Bank has surged since the start of the Gaza war.

The latest attack took place at an intersection close to the settlement of Ariel, the Israeli military said in a statement.

It added that a "terrorist was neutralised on the spot".

Four people suffered bullet wounds, three of them serious, and four others were lightly injured by shards of glass, according to the Magen David Adom rescue service.

Three of the injured were lying near the bus, conscious, when the rescuers arrived, a spokesman for MDA said, adding that those most seriously hurt were taken to hospital in a "stable condition".

At least 24 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during military operations in the West Bank since the Gaza war began, Israeli official figures show.

During the same period, at least 747 Palestinians have been killed in the territory by Israeli troops or settlers, according to an AFP count based on Palestinian official figures.

All of Israel's settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law.