An Israeli strike on a post office sheltering Gaza residents killed at least 30 Palestinians and wounded 50, medics said, and the Israeli military said on Friday it had targeted a senior member of Islamic Jihad .
Families displaced by the 14-month-old conflict had sought shelter in the postal facility in Nuseirat camp, and the strike late on Thursday brought the day's death toll in the enclave to 66, the doctors.
Israel said its target was the leader of Islamic Jihad in attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers and accused the militant group of exploiting civilian infrastructure and people as human shields for its operations.
An Israeli military statement said it was investigating reports of casualties. He did not identify the Islamic Jihad member by name.
Nuseirat is one of the eight historic Gaza Strip camps originally for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war surrounding the establishment of Israel. Today, it is part of a dense urban area full of displaced people from all over the city.
13 dead in southern collision
Earlier on Thursday, two Israeli strikes in southern Gaza killed 13 Palestinians who Gaza medics and Hamas said were part of a force protecting humanitarian aid trucks. The Israeli military said they were Hamas militants who were trying to remove the cargo.
Many of those killed in the attacks on Rafah and Khan Younis had ties to Hamas, according to sources close to the militant group.
The Israeli military said in a statement that the two airstrikes were aimed at ensuring the safe delivery of humanitarian aid and accused Hamas members of planning to prevent the aid from arriving. Gaza civilians who need it.
Armed groups have been hijacking aid trucks again, and Hamas has formed a task force to counter them. Hamas-led forces have killed more than two dozen members of the groups in recent months, Hamas sources and medics said.
Hamas said Israeli military strikes have killed at least 700 policemen tasked with receiving aid trucks in Gaza since the war began on October 7, 2023.
Gaza City evacuation alert
Separately, the Israeli military on Thursday ordered residents of several areas in central Gaza City to evacuate, saying it would respond to rockets fired from those areas. At nightfall on Thursday, dozens of families left the areas leading to the city center.
Months of cease-fire efforts by Arab mediators, Egypt and Qatar, supported by the United States, have failed to reach an agreement between the two warring sides.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in Tel Aviv on Thursday that he believed an agreement on a Gaza ceasefire and the release of hostilities could be close because Israel had indicated it was ready and there were signs of movement. from Hamas.
The war in the Palestinian enclave began after gunmen led by Hamas entered Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people and driving around 250 hostages back to Gaza was run by Hamas, according to Israeli officials.
Gaza's Health Ministry says Israel's military campaign since then has killed more than 44,400 Palestinians and injured many more. The Palestinian civil emergency service estimates that the bodies of 10,000 people could be trapped under the rubble, bringing the reported death toll to more than 50,000.
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