[Politics] At least 85 killed in new Israeli Gaza strikes, Hamas-run health ministry says

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At least 85 Palestinians have been killed in overnight Israeli air strikes in Gaza, the territory's Hamas-run health ministry has said.

Hours later, Israel's military said it had intercepted three rockets, which Hamas's armed wing said it fired at Tel Aviv in response.

It comes after Israel resumed its bombing campaign and ground operations in Gaza this week, with air strikes having already killed more than 430 people over the past two days, according to the health ministry.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Thursday that it had started a ground operation in northern Gaza. There had been a reprieve from large-scale military action since January, when a ceasefire had begun.

 

Gaza's health ministry also reported that 133 people were injured in the latest attacks on Thursday.

Israel resumed attacks on Tuesday as talks to extend the ceasefire deal failed to progress, warning they would intensify until Hamas released the remaining hostages.

Israel says Hamas is still holding 59 hostages, 24 of whom are believed to still be alive.

IDF spokesperson Col Avichay Adraee said Hamas had fired three rockets from southern Gaza. One was intercepted, while the other two fell in an "open area", he wrote in a post on X.

The Israeli military said earlier on Thursday that it had begun "targeted ground activities" to create what it called a "partial buffer between the north and south" of Gaza. It called the action a "limited ground operation".

Col Adraee said forces were deployed up to the centre of a strip, known as the Netzarim Corridor, which divides northern and southern Gaza.

Meanwhile, five staff members of the UN's Palestinian refugee agency Unrwa were among those killed over the "past few days", the agency's chief Philippe Lazzarini said in a post on X.

"They were teachers, doctors and nurses," he added, warning that "the worst is yet to come" amid the ongoing ground invasion.

On Wednesday, the UN said that one of its workers had been killed after its compound in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza was damaged. While it said the circumstances remain unclear, UN Office for Project Services head Jorge Moreira said it was "not an accident" and "at least an incident".

Gaza's health ministry blamed an Israeli strike, which it said injured five others. Israel's military said it did not attack the compound but was investigating the incident.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy confirmed on Thursday that a UK national had been wounded in the compound attack. It comes after a charity said one of its workers, a 51-year-old British bomb disposal expert, had been injured.

"Our priority is supporting them and their family at this time," he told MPs.

At the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, Qasim Abu Sharqiya said his two-year-old son, Omar, had been born through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) after five years of trying.

"They bombed a tent next to us and he died," he told AFP. "Omar is my only son, oh world, and I have no one else."

A doctor there, Tanya Haj Hassan, told the BBC's Newshour that she had heard of at least 76 people who "didn't even make it into the ER" but were taken "straight to the mortuary".

She recalled "a level of horror and evil that is really hard to articulate - it felt like Armageddon".

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2dr7jd7mno