Many dead in strike in Nuseirat camp – DW – May 19, 2024

The Israeli army says it is investigating reports from Gaza officials that at least 24 people were killed and several others injured in one of their attacks on Sunday night in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

The Gaza Strip Civil Defense Authority said the attack hit a single-family home.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said several children were among the injured.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital had previously estimated the death toll at 20.

As fighting continues across the Gaza Strip, both sides report rising death tolls.

The Israeli military said on Sunday that two Israeli soldiers were killed in a clash with Palestinian militants in the southern part of the enclave on Saturday.

The Israeli army has focused its military operations on the region, ostensibly to root out the remaining Hamas fighters holed up there.

This came as a hospital in Gaza reported that at least 20 Palestinians were killed in an overnight Israeli airstrike that hit a refugee camp in the center of the territory.

“We have suffered 20 deaths and several injuries after an Israeli airstrike attacked a house belonging to the Hassan family in Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza,” Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said in a statement.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that several children were among the injured.

The Nuseirat camp has been the scene of heavy fighting and Israeli airstrikes since early May, when the IDF began its operation focusing on the southern city of Rafah.

According to the Israeli military, 281 soldiers have been killed in fighting since the first ground attacks in the Gaza Strip on October 20.

According to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, 35,386 Palestinians have been killed since Israel began its offensive in response to Hamas raids in southern Israel on October 7 that killed about 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing increasing calls at home and abroad to develop viable plans for governing the Gaza Strip once peace is restored there.

On Saturday, his main political rival, War Cabinet member Benny Gantz, said he would leave the government on June 8 in the absence of a credible plan.

Such a plan should include an international, Arab and Palestinian administration to handle civil affairs in Gaza, he said.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, another Cabinet member, has also called for a plan that includes Palestinian administration of the enclave.

The United States, Israel’s main ally, has now pushed for Gaza to be governed by a revamped Palestinian Authority backed by Arab states before it eventually gains statehood.

Netanyahu said it was impossible to make such plans until Hamas was defeated.

So far, however, he has ruled out any role for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza and, like his government, has often spoken out against Palestinian statehood.

US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to discuss the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and a package of agreements between the United States and Saudi Arabia.

The two met in the Saudi city of Dhahran and discussed “the semi-final version of the draft strategic agreements between the two countries, which are nearing completion,” a Saudi statement said.

They also discussed a “credible path to achieving the two-state solution” for Israelis and Palestinians, ending the war in Gaza and facilitating humanitarian access, the statement said.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said earlier this month that the United States and Saudi Arabia were close to agreement on the bilateral portions of a normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The Reuters news agency reported that the agreement between Washington and Riyadh includes, among other things, an agreement on US security guarantees and civil nuclear assistance.

A meeting between Sullivan and Benjamin Netanyahu is planned in Israel later on Sunday.

rm/sms (Reuters, AP, AFP, dpa)