CAIRO/GAZA – Israel hit the Gaza Strip with new bombings that killed at least 20 people on Wednesday, Palestinian doctors said, a day after one of the deadliest strikes in the years-old war an killed dozens of people in the north of the enclave.

Eight of Wednesday’s victims were killed in a strike in the Salateen neighborhood of Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza. The area is close to where medics said at least 93 people were killed or missing Tuesday in an Israeli strike described as “horrific” by Washington.

The Israeli military assault that has ravaged the Gaza Strip and killed tens of thousands shows no signs of slowing as Israel wages a new war in Lebanon and its backer, the United States, tries after a year of unsuccessful attempts to negotiate a ceasefire for the two countries. .

Northern Gaza, where Israel announced in January that it had dismantled the command structure of the militant group Hamas, is currently at the center of the military assault. He sent tanks to Beit Lahiya and the neighboring towns of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia earlier this month to flush out Hamas militants who he said had regrouped in the area.

The new operation has killed hundreds of Palestinians, according to medical staff, and helped choke aid and food supplies to their lowest levels since the war began.

Beit Lahiya officials issued a statement calling on world powers and humanitarian agencies to end Israeli attacks and bring basic medical supplies, fuel and food, saying the latest military actions had left the area “without food, without water, without hospitals, without doctors”. “

Dr. Eid Sabbah, from Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, told Reuters that bodies and injured people remained trapped under the rubble.

He said the destruction of hospitals and a lack of medical supplies meant doctors and nurses mostly had no chance of saving people injured by airstrikes and shootings.

“The one who is injured remains lying on the ground and the one who is killed can only be transported by cart pulled by mules,” he said.

Israel’s decision this week to ban the UN humanitarian agency UNRWA from operating on its territory could have a disastrous impact on humanitarian efforts in Gaza, UN officials said .

The war in Gaza began after Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that ruled the territory for years, attacked Israeli towns and villages on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities.

The Israeli assault decimated the besieged strip, wiped out its infrastructure and killed more than 43,000 people, according to Palestinian authorities.

In another attack on Lebanon targeting the Iran-backed Hezbollah group and Hamas ally, Israeli forces bombarded parts of Beirut and southern areas of the country, killing more than 2,700 people, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Defense. Health.

NO END IN SIGHT

Israel’s military and intelligence operations have decapitated Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, one of Iran’s most important allies in the Middle East.

Yet Israel’s wars show no signs of slowing down.

Israel continues its attacks on Gaza despite the assassination this month of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, one of the masterminds of the October 7 attacks whose death was a key objective of the war. Several Israeli soldiers have been killed this month in northern Gaza, the army announced Tuesday.

U.S. mediators are working on a proposal to end hostilities between Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, starting with a 60-day ceasefire, two sources told Reuters, but Israel has continued its offensive, ordering residents to evacuate the eastern Lebanese town of Baalbek.

The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected several attempts by the United States, its main ally, to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon.

As families fled the Beit Lahiya area last week, parents carried their children in prams and wooden carts and dragged their suitcases through the mud. In early October, Israel asked residents of northern Gaza to leave their homes or face missile strikes.

Dalia al-Kharawat, a mother of five from Jabalia, begged residents of Gaza City to let her stay and now sleeps with her children in the open-air parking lot of a destroyed building.

“When we need to sleep, we go here in the rubble, the sand, the broken glasses. There is no room in the school shelters,” she says.

Israel has repeatedly bombed schools housing homeless families, according to Palestinian hospital workers in Gaza. REUTERS