By Jin Yu Young and Matthew Mpoke Bigg
Deadly strikes in the central Gaza Strip overnight killed or injured dozens of Palestinians, health officials and the United Nations said Monday, as the Israeli military hit a hospital complex where it said Hamas fighters were hiding and a separate attack damaged a school turned shelter.
An Israeli strike caused a tent encampment to catch fire in the courtyard of the hospital complex, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, leaving at least four people dead and about 70 others hurt, reported Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency. Video footage taken by The Associated Press and Reuters news agency Monday morning shows people looking through smoking debris and trying to extinguish fires at the encampment, where displaced people were sheltering in tents at the complex in the city of Deir al-Balah.
The Israeli military said that it had struck what it described as a Hamas command center, a claim could not be independently verified.
A separate attack hit a school compound in central Gaza where families were sheltering in the city of Nuseirat, according to Palestinian civil defense, an emergency service, which said that at least eight bodies had been recovered from the scene. The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports. The main U.N. agency aiding Palestinians in Gaza said the facility was to have been used as a site for polio vaccinations, as a mass anti-polio campaign in the territory resumed Monday.
The strikes in Gaza followed a weekend of intense fighting along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, home of the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah. Across Lebanon, at least 51 people were killed and 174 others injured Saturday, and at least three people were killed and 84 wounded Sunday, Lebanese authorities said, as Israel’s weekslong assault on Hezbollah continued.
Here’s what else to know:
— Drone attack: The Hezbollah drone strike on an army base in northern Israel that killed four soldiers over the weekend has highlighted Israel’s vulnerability against attacks from unmanned aircraft. Israeli police said Monday that its officers had referred reports of a drone to the air force in the minutes before the strike, only to be told erroneously that the aircraft was Israeli, prompting the officers to close the case. The Israeli military declined to comment.
— U.S. pledges forces to Israel: The United States said Sunday that it was sending an advanced missile defense system to Israel, along with about 100 U.S. troops to operate it. It will be the first time the United States sends forces to Israel since the Hamas-led attacks there last October. The Israeli military is weighing a retaliatory attack on Iran, which launched about 200 missiles at Israel on Oct. 1.
— Peacekeeping mission: The U.N. secretary-general called on Israel and others to respect a U.N. peacekeeping mission’s positions in southern Lebanon, after two Israeli tanks entered a base Sunday and attacks last week wounded at least four members of the force.
— Lebanon strike: The Lebanese Red Cross said Monday that 21 people had been killed in an Israeli airstrike on the village of Aitou in northern Lebanon, more than 70 miles from the Israeli border. The largely Christian region is not known to have been previously targeted by Israel over the past year as it has traded strikes with Hezbollah.
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