Israeli strikes in Gaza kill children and a journalist

Israeli forces continued to pound Gaza on Sunday, including the largely isolated north, as the Palestinian death toll in the war approached 45,000.

A large explosion lit up the southern Gaza skyline on Sunday night. An Israeli airstrike hit a school and killed at least 16 people in the southern city of Khan Younis, according to Nasser Hospital, where the bodies were taken. There was no immediate Israeli military statement.

In the north, an airstrike hit the Khalil Aweida school in the town of Beit Hanoun and killed at least 15 people, according to nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital where casualties were taken.

The dead included two parents and their daughter and a father and his son, the hospital said.

And in Gaza City, at least 17 people including six women and five children were killed in three airstrikes that hit houses sheltering displaced people, according to Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.

“We woke up to the strike. I woke up with the rubble on top of me,” said Yahia al-Yazji. “I found my wife with her head and skull visible, and my daughter’s intestines were gone. My wife was three months pregnant.”

Israel’s military said in a statement it struck a “terrorist cell” in Gaza City and a “terrorist meeting point” in the Beit Hanoun area.

Another Israeli airstrike killed a Palestinian journalist working for Al Jazeera, Ahmed al-Lawh, in central Gaza, a hospital and the Qatari-based TV station said.

The strike hit a point for Gaza’s civil defence agency in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp, Al-Awda Hospital said.

Also killed were three civil defence workers including the local head of the agency, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital. The civil defence is Gaza’s main rescue agency and operates under the Hamas-run government.

“We, the civil defence, are carrying out humanitarian work like in any country in the world. Why are we being targeted?” said Kerem Al Dalou.

Israel’s military said it struck a militant command centre embedded in the civil defence offices.

The war in Gaza began after Hamas and other militants from Gaza stormed southern Israel on October 7 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking well over 200 hostage.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed almost 45,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry’s count does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, but it says more than half of the dead have been women and children.

Most of Gaza’s population of some two million has been displaced, often multiple times. The hospitals that are still functioning say they lack medicines, fuel and other basic supplies, while aid groups warn of widespread hunger.

The head of the World Food Programme, Cindy McCain, told CBS on Sunday that the UN agency was able to get just two trucks of supplies into Gaza in November, citing insecurity there.

“We need a ceasefire, and we need it now,” she said. “We can no longer sit by and just allow these people to starve to death.”