Palestinian health officials in the Gaza Strip said Israeli strikes killed at least 11 people overnight into Tuesday, including a family of three in the built-up Bureij refugee camp and eight police officers.
In the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military said it killed two Palestinian militants who were attempting to launch a shooting attack toward Israeli communities.
The ongoing Israeli strikes in Gaza come as a cease-fire proposal, announced by U.S. President Joe Biden, has placed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a crossroads.
The proposal offers the possibility of ending Israel’s war against Hamas, returning scores of hostages held by the militant group and quieting fighting on the northern border with Lebanon. Although Biden said the proposal was Israeli, the Israeli leadership has appeared to distance itself from the plan, vowing to keep conducting military operations against Hamas until the militant group is destroyed.
Israeli bombardments and ground operations in Gaza have killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Israel’s expanding offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah has largely cut off the flow of food, medicine and other supplies to Palestinians facing widespread hunger.
Israel launched the war in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250. Israel’s military confirmed the deaths Monday of four more hostages held by Hamas. Around 80 hostages captured on Oct. 7 are believed to still be alive in Gaza, alongside the remains of 43 others.
Currently:
— The U.S. urges U.N. Security Council to support a cease-fire plan in Gaza announced by President Biden.
— Proposed Gaza cease-fire puts Netanyahu at a crossroads that could shape his legacy.
— Iran’s acting top diplomat dismisses U.S.-proposed Gaza cease-fire deal in visit to Lebanon.
— Palestinian officials apply to join South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide at the top U.N. court.
— Israeli airstrikes near Syria’s Aleppo kill several, including an Iranian adviser, reports say.
— Israel declares four more hostages are dead in Gaza.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Gaza at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Here’s the latest:
GENEVA — The U.N. human rights chief says his office has counted the killings of more than 500 Palestinians by the Israel Defense Forces and settlers in the West Bank since Oct. 7.
Volker Türk renewed his call for an end to violence in the West Bank after two Palestinian teenagers were killed near Aqabat Jaber refugee camp in Jericho over the weekend, and four other Palestinians were killed Monday by Israeli security forces.
That took the death toll of Palestinians in the West Bank to 505 since the deadly rampage by Hamas-led militants from Gaza in Israel on Oct. 7, according to his office.
“As if the tragic events in Israel and then Gaza over the past eight months were not enough, the people of the occupied West Bank are also being subjected to day-after-day of unprecedented bloodshed,” Türk said in a statement Tuesday. “It is unfathomable that so many lives have been taken in such a wanton fashion.”
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, 24 Israelis — including eight security force members — were killed in both the West Bank and Israel in clashes or alleged attacks by Palestinians from the West Bank, the rights office said.
The U.N. office said Israeli forces have often used lethal force “as a first resort” against Palestinian protesters throwing stones, firebombs and firecrackers at Israeli armed vehicles.
Turk lamented “pervasive immunity” for crimes committed by Israel security forces, saying allegations of unlawful activity must be investigated and those responsible held to account.
The Israel diplomatic mission in Geneva, where the U.N. rights office has its headquarters, said “Palestinian terrorist factions” were increasing their activities in the West Bank, with the “complicity and lack of leadership” of the Palestinian Authority.
“This is the reality that the High Commissioner chooses to ignore and dismiss,” the mission said. “Israel will not allow the West Bank to be turned into another terrorist stronghold.”
The U.N. rights office uses a strict methodology to confirm casualties in conflict zones, and its count could fall short of the actual toll.
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Palestinians displaced from the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis are setting up tents atop the ruins of their obliterated homes.
Many residents who fled fighting in the city months ago were once again forced to flee Israel’s offensive in the southernmost city of Rafah. The returnees came home to a barely recognizable city, their homes part of a vast landscape of ruin.
“This is my house but I cannot see where its foundations or borders are. I cannot find where it used to begin and end,” said Ayad Abu Khries, who returned to Khan Younis after being displaced to Rafah.
In one gutted second-floor apartment, a woman heated a pot on a makeshift stove — the building a shell surrounded by rubble. One family’s laundry hung from a rope and dangled above piles of stone, metal rods and other debris.
Israel withdrew troops from Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city, in April. Residents quickly returned to find what remained of their homes. The incursion into Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had been sheltering before fleeing again, prompted a new influx of returnees back into Khan Younis. The United Nations says more than 1 million Palestinians have fled Rafah, many of them having already been displaced multiple times.
Those who have returned to Khan Younis have struggled to find services. Some residents who came back said they must walk a mile or more to access food and water.
“The infrastructure is destroyed. There is no electricity or sewage system or water of anything. We live in tents and life is exhausting,” said Basima Moammar, who is living in a tent near her destroyed home.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Palestinian health officials in the Gaza Strip said Israeli strikes killed at least 11 people overnight into Tuesday, including a family of three and eight police officers.
A strike on a home in the built-up Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza late Monday killed two parents and their young daughter, while a second strike early Tuesday hit a police vehicle in the central town of Deir al-Balah, killing eight officers with the Hamas-run Interior Ministry.
An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies as they arrived Tuesday at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah and confirmed the details with hospital records.
Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames Hamas for their deaths because the militant group places fighters, underground tunnels and rocket launchers in dense, residential areas. The military rarely comments on individual strikes.
U.S. President Joe Biden has recently detailed an Israeli cease-fire plan that the sides were considering.
The war, sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between fighters and noncombatants in its tally. Many of the dead have been women and children, the ministry says.
TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israeli military said Tuesday that six soldiers were lightly injured in a brush fire in the country’s north that was sparked by fighting with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
The blaze, which has been raging since Sunday, was mostly under control Tuesday, according to Israeli Army Radio. The military said it had sent reserve soldiers and equipment to assist Israel’s Fire and Rescue services to stamp out the blaze.
Fires sparked by fighting have ignited sporadically in recent weeks, but this week’s blaze was more widespread and appeared to cause more damage. Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority said around 10,000 dunams (2,500 acres) burned across northern Israel this week as a result of the brush fires.
Significant damage was caused to several nature reserves and parks that will take years to rehabilitate, the Nature and Parks Authority said. A total of nearly 40,000 dunams (9,900 acres) have burned since the end of May in multiple brush fires, many of which were started by rocket and other projectile fire launched by Hezbollah, the authority said.
Sharon Levy, the director of the Golan Region at the Nature and Parks Authority, said the dry summer season was exacerbating the fires.
Hezbollah began launching rockets at Israel a day after the war in Gaza broke out with Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. Since then, Israel and Hezbollah have been trading fire daily in violence that has pushed the region to the brink of wider war.
TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israeli military said Tuesday it killed two Palestinian militants who were attempting to launch a shooting attack toward Israeli communities from the occupied West Bank.
The military said the two approached the West Bank separation barrier and were killed by Israeli forces. The military provided a photo of a rifle it said the men were set to use to carry out the alleged attack.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militant group in the area, claimed the men as its fighters, saying they were killed while carrying out a shooting attack near the Palestinian city of Tulkarem.
The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed the deaths.
Residents of Israeli communities just outside the West Bank have reported an uptick in shootings emanating from the occupied Palestinian territory in recent days.
A surge of violence has gripped the West Bank since the October start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Israel has been cracking down on militancy in the West Bank, killing more than 500 people there since the start of the war, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Many of them were killed in fighting with the military or for throwing stones at troops. Others not involved in the confrontations have also been killed.