Middle East crisis: Israeli strikes kill 28 Palestinians in Gaza – live updates | Israel

Middle East crisis: Israeli strikes kill 28 Palestinians in Gaza – live updates | Israel

Israeli airstrikes kill at least 28 Palestinians across Gaza – official

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli airstrikes overnight and early this morning have killed at least 28 Palestinian people. Civil agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said at least 13 people were killed in an airstrike on a house in Deir al-Balah – a town in central Gaza – belonging to the Abu Samra family.

Bassal said that eight people, including four children, were killed in the attack on the Musa Bin Nusayr school, which had been repurposed as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war. Bassal said an overnight Israeli airstrike killed three people in the southern city of Rafah, and a drone strike this morning hit a car in Gaza City, killing four people.

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Key events

Turkey says it believes Kurdish fighters will be forced out of all Syrian territory

Turkey believes Syria’s new rulers, including the Syrian National Army (SNA) armed group which Ankara backs, will drive Kurdish YPG fighters from all territory they occupy in northeastern Syria, the country’s defence minister, Yasar Guler, said.

Turkey sees the Syrian YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants who have fought an insurgency against the Turkish state for decades.

The YPG spearheads an alliance, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is backed by the US and controls territory in northeastern Syria. Since the fall of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad two weeks ago, Turkey and Syrian groups it backs have fought against the SDF, seizing the city of Manbij.

“We believe that the new leadership in Syria and the Syrian National Army, which is an important part of its army, along with the Syrian people, will free all territories occupied by terrorist organisations,” Guler was quoted by Reuters as saying.

“We will also take every necessary measure with the same determination until all terrorist elements beyond our borders are cleared,” he said.

Syrian National Army (SNA) soldiers celebrate victory in Manbij on 7 December, 2024. Photograph: Dia Images/Getty Images
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Israeli forces have detained at least six Palestinian people, including a child, across the occupied West Bank since last night, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society and the Palestinian Authority Commission for Prisoners’ Affairs said.

According to Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, the detentions were carried out in Nablus, Tubas, Tulkarm and Ramallah.

These detentions were accompanied by house demolitions and the detention of several individuals without charge, Wafa reported.

It is estimated that over 12,100 Palestinians have been arrested in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since last October.

Human rights groups and international organisations have alleged widespread abuse of inmates detained by Israel in raids in the West Bank.

They have described alleged abusive and humiliating treatment, including holding blindfolded and handcuffed detainees in cramped cages as well as beatings, intimidation and harassment.

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Israeli airstrikes kill at least 28 Palestinians across Gaza – official

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli airstrikes overnight and early this morning have killed at least 28 Palestinian people. Civil agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal said at least 13 people were killed in an airstrike on a house in Deir al-Balah – a town in central Gaza – belonging to the Abu Samra family.

Bassal said that eight people, including four children, were killed in the attack on the Musa Bin Nusayr school, which had been repurposed as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war. Bassal said an overnight Israeli airstrike killed three people in the southern city of Rafah, and a drone strike this morning hit a car in Gaza City, killing four people.

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Israeli forces attacking northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital – report

Gaza’s health ministry has said the three main hospitals in northern Gaza – of which Kamal Adwan is one – are barely functioning and have been under repeated attack since Israel sent tanks into Beit Lahiya and nearby Beit Hanoun and Jabalia in October. The Israeli military claims the aim of the renewed assault on the north is to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping there. But the IDF has attacked hospitals and shelters, with many civilians being killed by Israeli forces amid relentless attacks.

As we mentioned in the opening summary, Israeli forces have reportedly launched more attacks on the Kamal Adwan hospital. Here is a fuller report from Al Jazeera (which we have not yet been able to independently verify):

They (Israeli forces) have been using heavy artillery and detonating explosive devices that had been planted in the areas surrounding the hospital, preventing and impeding the movement of ambulances, as well as that of people seeking to take the wounded from bomb sites to the medical facility.

The most fierce attack on the hospital last night was on its laboratory.

These attacks seem to be deliberate, on purpose, just to push the facility out of service.

It started with quadcopters surrounding the facility, and telling everyone in the facility – via loudspeakers – to leave. By the way, it’s only some 60 people who remain there. They include the director of the hospital, Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the medical staff working with him in these difficult conditions and the patients.

A fire burns as seen through a window from Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip, on 18 December 2024. Photograph: Reuters
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Israeli airstrikes kill at least 17 Palestinian people across Gaza

Hello, and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza and developments in the Middle East more widely.

Israeli military airstrikes across the Gaza Strip have killed at least 17 Palestinian people, 8 of them at a school sheltering displaced families in Gaza City, medics said.

Palestinian medics said eight people, including children, were killed in the Musa Bin Nusayr school that sheltered displaced families in Gaza City.

Also in Gaza City, medics said four Palestinians were killed when an airstrike hit a car. At least five other Palestinians were killed in two separate airstrikes in Rafah and Khan Younis south of the enclave.

A girl stands at the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted the Musa Bin Nusayr school in the al-Daraj neighbourhood in Gaza City on 22 December 2024. Photograph: Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP/Getty Images

Here is a brief summary of what you else you need to know today:

  • Several people have been injured by Israeli attacks on northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital, according to Al Jazeera, with Israeli forces reportedly firing directly on the facility’s ICU and maternity ward, as well as at the nearby al-Awda hospital. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan hospital, said the army ordered staff to evacuate the hospital and move patients and injured people toward another hospital in the area. Abu Safiya said the mission was “next to impossible” because staff did not have ambulances to move the patients. “Tonight’s reports of bombardment near Kamal Adwan hospital and order to evacuate the hospital are deeply worrisome. The hospital has been in the midst of fighting for too long and the lives of patients are at risk,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote in a post on X late last night.

  • The US military said it mistakenly shot down one of its own fighter aircraft over the Red Sea on Sunday morning, forcing both pilots to eject. Both were rescued, one with minor injuries, after the “apparent case of friendly fire,” which is being investigated, US Central Command said in a statement. The fighter was an F/A-18 Hornet flying off the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman. One of the carrier’s escort ships, the missile cruiser Gettysburg, “mistakenly fired on and hit” the plane, the statement said.

  • The US military carried out airstrikes against a missile storage facility and a command-and-control facility operated by Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, on Saturday. The US military’s Central Command said the strikes aimed to “disrupt and degrade” Houthi operations, including attacks against US navy warships and merchant vessels in the southern Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb and Gulf of Aden. The strike followed a similar attack last week by US aircraft against a command and control facility operated by the Houthis, who control much of Yemen. The US attack on Sana’a came the same day that a Houthi missile struck Israel’s commercial hub Tel Aviv, injuring 16 people in the second such airstrike in days.

  • Turkey has vowed to “do whatever it takes” to ensure its security if the new Syrian administration cannot address Ankara’s concerns about US-allied Kurdish groups it views as terrorist groups, the country’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said on Saturday. Turkey regards the YPG, the militant group spearheading the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) militants who have fought an insurgency against the Turkish state for 40 years and are deemed terrorists by Ankara, Washington, and the EU.

  • The UN has warned that people living in makeshift shelters might not survive the winter. Nearly 2 million Palestinians have been displaced by Israel’s war on the territory and are struggling to protect themselves from the wind, cold and rain.

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