Strike at Gaza hospital kills four as US and Israel hold ‘heated’ ceasefire talks
An Israeli airstrike killed four people in a tent inside a hospital complex in Gaza early on Sunday, and a Palestinian stabbed two people to death in a city south near Tel Aviv, amid reports of heated disagreements between US and Israeli leaders about a possible ceasefire deal.
Fears of all-out war in the region have escalated after assassinations this week of the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran and Hezbollah number two in Beirut.
France and Italy became the latest countries to urge their citizens to leave Lebanon, as Israelis reported GPS jamming around Tel Aviv on Sunday, something the Israeli military has said in the past it does to counter the threats of drones and missiles.
Iran has sworn revenge for the killings of two key allies. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday that the country was ready for any scenario and would “exact a heavy price” for any retaliation.
The US has also promised to defend Israel, ordering an aircraft carrier to sail to the region and moving other military assets into position.
Despite the promise of US solidarity in the face of Iranian attack, US President Joe Biden has been open about concerns that the killing of Haniyeh will complicate efforts to stop fighting in Gaza, which is key to regional de-escalation.
He had a “heated conversation” this week with Netanyahu, who was forced to deny that he was an obstacle to a ceasefire and hostage release deal, the New York Times has reported, quoting a senior US official.
That was just the latest confrontation between two increasingly uneasy allies. Biden reportedly told the Israeli leader to “stop bullshitting me” when the two men discussed the return of hostages at an in-person meeting at the White House late last month.
“Biden realised that Netanyahu was lying to him about the hostages,” Haaretz newspaper quoted a senior administration official as saying.
Biden’s reported scepticism about Netanyahu’s commitment to the return of Israeli hostages puts him on the same page as Israel’s defence chiefs. They believe that the country’s leader is not interested a ceasefire deal even though a workable proposal is on the table, Israeli media reported this week.
In Gaza on Sunday, Israeli airstrikes killed 18 people, Gaza health authorities reported, including four displaced people who had been sheltering in the courtyard of the al-Aqsa hospital, the main medical facility in the central city of Deir al-Balah.
The area outside the hospital has become an informal settlement for people who have fled their homes, many of them displaced multiple times as Israeli troops have moved across the strip during 10 months of war.
Video from the Associated Press showed men trying to put out flames and rescue the injured. A second strike on a nearby home killed a girl and her parents, the hospital said.
Those attacks came the day after 16 people were killed and 21 injured in an airstrike on displaced people sheltering in a school in Gaza City. Israel said it had struck a Hamas command centre at the school, and that the hospital strike targeted a militant, AP reported.
Israel’s war in Gaza has killed at least 39,550 Palestinians, according to Health authorities in the strip. It does not distinguish between civilians and military, but over half of those who have been identified are women, children and older people.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza after Hamas launched cross-border attacks that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostage on 7 October.
The stabbings in Israel on Sunday took place in the city of Holon,just south of Tel Aviv, in a park and near a fuel station. The victims were a woman in her 70s and a man in his 80s. Two men were injured, Israel’s ambulance service said.
The attacker, who police said was a Palestinian, went on a rampage over half a kilometre before police shot him dead.