At least 50 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a building in the northern Gaza Strip, the Hamas-controlled health authority said late on Thursday.
The victims included five staff members from a nearby clinic in Beit Lahia, including a pediatrician, a laboratory assistant, two paramedics and a technician, according to the authority and Kamal Adwan Hospital director Hussam Abu Safiya.
The information cannot be independently verified. The Israeli military initially made no comment when contacted.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army said one of its soldiers was killed during clashes in the northern Gaza Strip.
Earlier, Palestinian media reported that an Israeli attack in the northern Gaza Strip killed at least nine Palestinians and injured several others.
According to the report by news agency WAFA, houses in Gaza City were hit by an airstrike on Thursday evening.
Hamas-controlled civil defense reported at least 13 deaths and about 40 injuries.
The Israeli military said it would investigate the report.
Report: Babies in the Gaza Strip are dying of hypothermia
Three newborn babies in the Gaza Strip have died of hypothermia, according to a report Thursday by the Palestinian news agency WAFA.
It said the babies were between four and 21 days old. Aid agencies have repeatedly warned of the harsh conditions displaced families in Gaza face during the winter months.
According to UN figures, almost 1 million people in Gaza lack adequate shelter. Much of the Gaza Strip’s approximately 2 million residents have been forced to flee their homes several times as a result of ongoing fighting between Israel and Hamas.
The devastation has left many living in tent camps, where temperatures in Gaza City recently dropped below 10 degrees Celsius at night.
“If reports of three babies freezing to death in Gaza do not touch us, we do not understand the birth in a manger in Bethlehem or the light of Hanukkah,” German Ambassador to Israel Steffen Seibert wrote on X.
“They should push us for an end to the war and Hamas terror, winter supplies for Gazans and a full release of the hostages,” Seibert added.
Israeli attack kills five Palestinian journalists
An Israeli airstrike on a press van killed five Palestinian journalists working in Gaza, according to a media report from the area on Thursday.
Broadcaster Al Jazeera, citing a reporter from Gaza, reported that journalists from Palestinian broadcaster Al-Quds Today were working near a hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the middle of the closed coastal strip, when their marked press vehicle was hit .
The Israeli military said only that it carried out a “targeted” nighttime attack on “a vehicle carrying a group of terrorists from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization in the Nuseirat area.”
The Israeli statement on Neither Al Jazeera nor the Israeli military’s information could be independently verified.
Israeli attacks have made Gaza the deadliest place in the world to work as a journalist, with a third of the killings of media workers this year taking place in the war-torn Palestinian region, according to a December report from Reporters Without Borders.
Before this attack, at least 141 journalists had been killed in the war between Israel and Gaza since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, according to the American nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists.
Hamas militants and other Palestinian extremists then entered Israel, attacking Israeli communities and killing more than 1,200 people, while about 250 others were taken hostage to Gaza.
Since then, Israel has carried out military attacks on Gaza, with Palestinian figures reporting more than 45,300 deaths.
Israeli minister prays at controversial Islamic religious site
Meanwhile, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has reignited condemnation by praying at a controversial religious site in Jerusalem, in violation of agreements with the Muslim community.
Under a long-standing agreement with Muslim authorities, Jews are allowed to visit the site known to them as the Temple Mount but to Muslims as the Noble Shrine, but are not allowed to pray there. However, there have been repeated violations of this agreement.
“I went to our shrine to pray for our soldiers, for the speedy return of all hostages and for total victory with God’s help,” Ben-Gvir wrote in a post on social media platform X on Thursday.
The site houses the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque and is the third holiest site in Islam. It is also sacred to Jews because there were once two Jewish temples there.
The site in Jerusalem’s Old City is under Muslim rule, while Israel is responsible for security.
As after Ben-Gvir’s latest provocations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the status quo on the Temple Mount had not changed. However, the violations of the rules by the Minister of National Security never have any consequences.
A Palestinian man carries the dead body of a child killed in an Israeli attack on a school, outside Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, also known as Baptist Hospital, in Gaza City. Hadi Daoud/APA Images via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
