Israeli forces today bombed historic refugee camps in the central Gaza Strip and hit Gaza City in the north, killing at least 13 people, and tanks pushed deeper into Rafah in the southern Palestinian enclave , health officials and residents reported, reported Reuters, quoted by BTA.
An Israeli airstrike killed six people in the town of Zaweida in the central Gaza Strip, and two people were killed when a house was hit in the Bureij camp. An Israeli airstrike killed three people in a car in Deir al-Bala, a city full of people displaced from other parts of Gaza, health officials said.
In the northern city of Gaza, medics said two Palestinians were killed in another airstrike.
The Israeli military said in a statement that its forces killed two senior commanders of "Islamic Jihad" in two airstrikes in Gaza City, including one they say was involved in the Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that sparked the Gaza war.
Residents of Rafah reported that Israeli tanks had advanced deeper into the western part of the city and had taken up a position on top of a hill. The Israeli military said forces discovered several tunnels and killed several gunmen.
The armed wing of the group "Hamas" and its allies said they fired mortars at Israeli forces in southwestern Rafah today.
The fighting has brought the 60-bed Red Cross field hospital in Rafah to the brink of capacity, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in a statement.
More than nine months after the start of the war, Palestinian militants led by "Hamas" are still able to attack Israeli forces with anti-tank missiles and mortars, sometimes firing rockets at Israel, according to Reuters.
Israel has vowed to root out "Hamas" after Islamist militants killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages in an attack on October 7. Since then, Israel's counteroffensive has killed more than 38,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities.