Palestinians gather at at the site of an Israeli strike at a tent camp in Al-Mawasi area, amid Israel-Hamas conflict, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on July 16, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israeli strikes across Gaza killed more than 30 people as Israel and Hamas continued to weigh the latest cease-fire proposal.

In central Gaza, strikes overnight into July 16 killed 24 people. The deaths in Nuseirat and Zawaida included 10 women and four children.

Hamas has said cease-fire talks meant to wind down the nine-month-long war would continue even after Israel targeted the militant group’s top military commander, Mohammed Deif, whose fate remained unclear. Israel says another senior Hamas militant was killed in that strike that local health officials said killed 90 Palestinians, including children.

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.

The strikes late on July 15 and early July 16 hit four homes, according to emergency workers. An Associated Press journalist saw the bodies, some wrapped in blankets and a floral sheet, as they were ferried to Al Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah.

Clouds of smoke from Israeli strikes rose above the city.

The military said it “conducted targeted raids on terror targets” in central Gaza, without elaborating. It did not immediately provide details on the targets.

In southern Gaza, nine people were killed in two separate strikes overnight on July 15, according to medical officials and AP journalists. Four were killed in a blast that struck a house in eastern Khan Younis and five were killed in a strike on a street in southernmost Rafah, according to ambulance workers who transported the bodies to Nasser Hospital.

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’ October 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 July 16 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.

Palestinians gather near damage, following what Palestinians say was an Israeli strike at a tent camp in Al-Mawasi area, amid Israel-Hamas conflict, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip July 13, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

An Israeli attack on the south of the Gaza Strip on July 13 killed 71 people and injured scores, the Health Ministry in Gaza said, while an Israeli official said it targeted the head of Hamas’ military wing.

The Israeli official identified the target of the strike in Khan Younis as Mohammed Deif, believed by many to be the chief architect of the October 7 attack that killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel and triggered the Israel-Hamas war.

Deif has topped Israel’s most-wanted list for years and is believed to have escaped multiple Israeli assassination attempts in the past.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity pending a formal announcement, said Rafa Salama, another top Hamas official, was also targeted in the strike. The official did not have details on whether the two targets were killed.

The Gaza Health Ministry said at least 289 others were injured in the attack and that many of the injured and dead were taken to nearby Nasser Hospital. At the hospital, Associated Press journalists counted over 40 bodies and witnesses there described an attack that included several strikes.

It remains unclear if the attack landed inside Muwasi, an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone, which stretches from northern Rafah to Khan Younis. The coastal strip is where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have fled to in search of safety, sheltering mostly in makeshift tents.

Israel launched its campaign in Gaza after Hamas’ October 7 attack in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250.

Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 38,300 people in Gaza and wounded more than 88,000, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. The Ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. More than 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes, and most are now crowded into squalid tent camps, facing widespread hunger.