Palestinian health officials say Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip overnight and into thursday killed at least 36 people, including five children and their parents.
The latest strikes came on the eve of new talks aimed at reaching a cease-fire in the 10-month-long war. The United States, Qatar and Egypt are hoping to broker an agreement, but the sides remain far apart on several issues even after months of indirect negotiations.
One strike hit a family home late Tuesday in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, which dates back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. It killed five children, ranging in age from 2 to 11, and their parents, according to the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
An Associated Press reporter who saw the bodies arrive said they had been dismembered by the blast and that the 2-year-old had been decapitated.
In the nearby Maghazi refugee camp, a strike on a home early Wednesday killed four people and wounded others, the hospital said.
In the southern city of Khan Younis, the Health Ministry’s emergency service said first responders recovered the bodies of four men who were killed in a strike on a residential tower late Tuesday.
Two more people were killed in an Israeli strike on a house in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, according to the emergency service. The strike also wounded five people.
Health authorities in Gaza do not say whether those killed in Israeli strikes are militants or civilians. Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in residential areas. The army rarely comments on individual strikes.
Residents of a beleaguered Bedouin hamlet in the southern reaches of the occupied West Bank say Israeli military bulldozers demolished six more homes in the community on Wednesday, leaving 28 people homeless.
The demolitions in Umm Al-Khair come after military bulldozers last month knocked down several homes in the village, leaving a quarter of the village’s 200 people without shelter.
Videos sent by residents of the village to The Associated Press showed bulldozers rolling into the community on Wednesday morning, escorted by at least one military vehicle. Soldiers could be seen pushing protesters and Palestinians away from the demolition zone, and bulldozers crashed into small tent-like structures, knocking them to the ground.
COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of civilian matters in the West Bank, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the past, it has alleged that many of the structures in the villagewere built without permits. Palestinians in these areas have long said it is virtually impossible to get construction permits from Israeli authorities.
Umm Al-Khair has also been the subject of ramped-up settler attacks over the last few months, attacks which residents say have harmed the village water supply and gone unpunished by military authorities. Small Bedouin hamlets in the West Bank are some of the most vulnerable communities to displacement caused by demolitions and settler violence, rights groups say.
