RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Nearly two-thirds of health facilities in the Gaza Strip are no longer functioning due to a massive and deadly increase in Israeli airstrikes on the territory, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.
According to the WHO, a total of 46 out of 72 health facilities – including 12 out of 35 hospitals – have ceased operations across the Gaza Strip. Palestinian health officials said a lack of electricity and fuel for generators due to an Israeli blockade, as well as damage from airstrikes, had forced many facilities to close.
Health authorities in the Gaza Strip said more than 700 people died in Israeli airstrikes last day.
This is a recent update. AP’s earlier story follows below.
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel stepped up its bombing of targets in the Gaza Strip, the military said Tuesday, ahead of an expected ground invasion against Hamas militants that the U.S. fears could spark a wider conflict in the region, including attacks on American troops troops.
The intensified attacks and rapidly rising thousands of deaths in Gaza came as Hamas released two elderly Israeli women who were among the hundreds of hostages it captured in its devastating attack on cities in southern Israel on October 7 had.
French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Tel Aviv on Tuesday and met with the families of French citizens killed or held hostage before heading off for talks with senior Israeli officials. He told them he had come “to express our support and solidarity and share your pain” and to reassure Israel that it “will not be left alone in the war against terrorism.”
In a joint news conference with Macron, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would make every effort to fight the war quickly, “but it could be a long war.”
The 2.3 million people in the Gaza Strip have been running out of food, water and medicine since Israel sealed off the area following the attack. A third small aid convoy entered Gaza on Monday, carrying only a tiny fraction of the aid that aid groups say is necessary.
Tamira Alrifai, spokeswoman for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, said the 54 trucks entering the Gaza Strip in recent days were a “trickle” compared to the 500 trucks a day that entered before the war. She said U.N. negotiators were “very, very far away” from reaching an agreement to send needed sustained aid to Gaza.
With Israel still banning fuel imports, the United Nations said aid distribution would soon come to a halt if the country could no longer refuel trucks in the Gaza Strip. Hospitals overwhelmed with the wounded are struggling to keep generators running to power life-saving medical equipment and incubators for premature babies.
On Tuesday, Israel said it had carried out 400 airstrikes in the past day, killing Hamas commanders, hitting militants preparing to fire rockets at Israel and attacking command centers and a Hamas tunnel shaft. The day before, Israel reported 320 attacks. The official Palestinian news agency WAFA said many of the airstrikes hit residential buildings, some in southern Gaza, where Israel had ordered civilians to seek shelter.
An overnight strike hit a four-story residential building in the southern town of Khan Younis, killing at least 32 people and wounding scores more, according to survivors.
The fatalities included 13 members of the Saqallah family, said Ammar al-Butta, a relative who survived the airstrike. He said there were about 100 people there, including many who had come from Gaza City, where the evacuation of Israel’s civilian population had been ordered.
“They sought shelter at our home because we thought our area was safe. But apparently there is no safe place in Gaza,” he said.
Fifteen members of another family were among at least 33 Palestinians buried in a shallow, sandy mass grave at a Gaza hospital on Monday after being killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Israel says it is not targeting civilians and that Hamas militants are using them as cover for their attacks. Palestinian militants have fired over 7,000 rockets at Israel since the war began, Israel said, and Hamas said it fired a new barrage on Tuesday morning.
“We continue to attack violently in Gaza City and its surroundings, where Hamas builds its terrorist infrastructure, where Hamas places its troops,” said Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said six of its staff were killed in bombings, bringing the death toll to 35 since the war began.
The war has killed more than 5,000 Palestinians, including about 2,000 minors and around 1,100 women, the Hamas-run health ministry said. This also includes the controversial number of victims of an explosion in a hospital last week. The number of victims has risen rapidly in recent days, with the ministry reporting 436 additional deaths in the last 24 hours alone.
The fighting killed more than 1,400 people in Israel – mostly civilians who were killed in the first Hamas attack.
On Monday evening, the two released hostages, 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz and 79-year-old Nurit Cooper, were brought from Gaza to Egypt at the Rafah border crossing and placed in ambulances. The women were abducted from their homes in the Nir Oz kibbutz along with their husbands, who were not released.
As she sat in a wheelchair, appearing weak and speaking quietly, Lifshitz told reporters on Tuesday that the militants beat her with sticks during the abduction, bruising her ribs and making it difficult for her to breathe. They drove her to Gaza and then forced her to walk several kilometers on wet ground to get to a network of tunnels that looked like a spider web, she said.
However, her treatment there improved, she said. The people assigned to guard her “told us that they believed in the Koran and would not harm us.” Lifshitz, whose husband is still held hostage, said conditions were kept clean, she received medical attention, including medication, and that she was given the same daily meal of cheese and pickles as her captors.
The women were released days after an American woman and her teenage daughter were released. Hamas and other militants are believed to have kidnapped about 220 people in Gaza, including an unconfirmed number of foreigners and dual citizens.
On Monday, Hamas released a video showing the handover. Militants hand out drinks and snacks to the dazed but calm women and hold their hands as they are led to Red Cross officials. Just before the video ends, Lifshitz reaches back to shake a militant’s hand.
Around the same time, Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency released a recording showing Hamas prisoners – most in clean prison uniforms, but one in a bloody T-shirt and at least one wincing in pain – being handcuffed in sat in dreary offices and talked about the terrorist militia attack on October 7th. The men said they were tasked with killing young men and kidnapping women, children and the elderly and were promised financial rewards.
The Associated Press was unable to independently verify either video, and both hostages and prisoners may have acted under duress.
The Israeli military later dropped leaflets in Gaza urging Palestinians to provide information about the hostages’ whereabouts. In return, the military promised a reward and protection for the informant’s house.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas. Iran-backed fighters in the region are warning of possible escalation, including targeting U.S. forces stationed in the Middle East, if a ground offensive is launched.
The US has told Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and other groups not to join the fight. There have been almost daily firefights between Israel and Hezbollah across the Israeli-Lebanese border, and in recent days Israeli warplanes have attacked targets in Syria, Lebanon and the occupied West Bank.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said there had been an increase in missile and drone attacks by Iranian-backed militias against U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria and that the U.S. was “deeply concerned about the possibility of a significant escalation” in the coming years days.
He said U.S. officials were in “active discussions” with Israeli counterparts about the potential impact of escalated military action.
The U.S. told Israeli officials that delaying a ground offensive would give Washington more time to work with regional mediators to release more hostages, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose sensitive negotiations.
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Magdy reported from Cairo and Nessman from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Wafaa Shurafa in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, Aamer Madhani in Washington, Amy Teibel in Jerusalem and Brian Melley in London contributed to this report.
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