The war between Israel and Hamas, which entered its 37th day on Sunday, was sparked by the Palestinian Islamist movement’s bloody Oct. 7 attack on Israeli soil from its controlled Gaza Strip.
In retaliation, Israel vowed to “destroy” Hamas and relentlessly shell the besieged area, home to 2.4 million Palestinians. The Israeli army launched a ground operation in the Gaza Strip on October 27.
Here are the latest developments:
The Hamas government’s deputy health minister in Gaza, Youssef Abou Rich, told AFP on Sunday that an Israeli airstrike had “completely destroyed” the building of the heart disease department at Al-Chifa Hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip. The official did not provide an assessment and the Israeli army did not immediately respond.
The hospital houses “650 patients, about forty children in incubators, all at risk of death, and 15,000 displaced people,” said Mr. Abou Rich. The power has been out there since Saturday and dozens of babies in incubators and patients in intensive care units are in mortal danger, according to several international NGOs.
The Israeli army said on Sunday it would help evacuate these vulnerable premature babies “to a safer hospital” and that a “safe passage” would be opened from the hospital to the refugees’ main route for escaping the north.
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) said on Sunday that there had been “a significant number of deaths and injuries” in the “bombing” of its headquarters in Gaza City, which was evacuated by its staff and now displaced by hundreds is inhabited by Palestinians.
According to an AFP journalist, at least four bombs were dropped on the Bani Souheila sector near Khan Younes in the southern Gaza Strip, destroying around ten houses. The head of Gaza’s hospitals, Mohammed Zaqout, reported “ten deaths, including women and children.”
• Also read: Displaced people from Gaza in dust, cold and hunger
Several civilians were injured in Israel on Sunday by an anti-tank missile that landed in the north of the country, the army said, which then targeted the source of the shot in southern Lebanon.
The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) announced that one of its members was shot and injured in southern Lebanon, where exchanges of fire between the Israeli army and Lebanese Hezbollah are now frequent.
According to the army, Israeli warplanes attacked “terrorist infrastructure” in Syria after firing on the Israeli-annexed part of the Golan.
At least 11,078 people, mostly civilians, including 4,506 children, have been killed in Israeli bombings in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health, whose latest report was Friday.
The Hamas attack claimed around 1,200 lives on the Israeli side, most of them civilians killed on October 7, and according to the latest official Israeli figures, 42 soldiers have been killed in the Gaza Strip since Israeli military operations began on the ground.
The Israeli military estimates that about 240 people were taken hostage during the first Hamas attack in the Gaza Strip. According to Israeli media, these prisoners include at least thirty minors, including small children.