Israeli strikes in the central Gaza Strip overnight into Tuesday killed 24 people, according to hospital records, as Israel and Hamas weigh the latest ceasefire proposal and deadly violence rages on.
The strikes in Nuseirat and Zawaida killed 10 women and four children, the records from Al Aqsa hospital show.
The Israeli military said it “conducted targeted raids on terror targets” in central Gaza, without elaborating.
Another nine people were killed in strikes in southern Gaza late on Monday, according to medical officials.
The deadly violence comes as Israel and Hamas are weighing the latest ceasefire proposal.
International mediators are working to push the two sides towards agreeing to a deal that would bring a halt to the devastating fighting and set free roughly 120 hostages still held by the militant group in Gaza.
Earlier on Tuesday, Israeli police said officers shot and killed a Palestinian after he stabbed a police officer in the occupied West Bank.
Police said the officer was slightly injured in the attack and identified the Palestinian as a 19-year-old from the Gaza Strip. It was not immediately clear what he was doing in the West Bank.
Also on Tuesday, the Israeli military said Palestinians opened fire on a car in the West Bank, slightly wounding a number of Israeli civilians.
Elsewhere in the territory, the military said forces opened fire on a “suspicious vehicle” that turned out to belong to an Israeli.
Two Israeli civilians were slightly injured as a result of the apparent mistaken fire, the military said.
The bloodshed is part of a wave of violence surging in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza.
More than 500 Palestinians have been killed in the territory during that time, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, most of them in fighting with Israeli forces.
Others were killed while throwing stones, or in protests against the military. Some of those killed were not involved in confrontations with Israeli forces.
Palestinian attacks against Israelis in the West Bank have also been on the increase since the war broke out.
Hamas’s October 7 attack sparked the war when militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people – mostly civilians – and abducted about 250.
Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 38,400 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. It does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are crammed into squalid tent camps in central and southern Gaza. Israeli restrictions, fighting and the breakdown of law and order have limited humanitarian aid efforts, causing widespread hunger and sparking fears of famine.
Under American pressure, Israel has pledged to deliver large quantities of humanitarian aid into the war-ravaged Gaza Strip. But at the same time, the US and Israel have allowed tax-deductible donations to far-right groups that have blocked that aid from being delivered.
