MORE deaths were recorded in Gaza today following the killing of at least 17 people, including five children, by Israeli air strikes overnight.
One attack hit a family home in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing children aged from two to 11.
The bodies were dismembered by the blast and the two-year-old was decapitated, according to an Associated Press news agency reporter.
The Nuseirat camp dates back to the 1948 ethnic cleansing that accompanied Israel’s creation.
Strikes also hit the Maghazi refugee camp, a residential tower block in Khan Younis and a home in Beit Lahiya.
Israel’s military continued attacks throughout central and southern Gaza during the day, killing and wounding dozens of Palestinians.
In one assault in Khan Younis, three of the five people killed were children, according to the Wafa news agency.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says that the overall death toll from the 10-month Israeli offensive is nearing 40,000.
Tensions also remain high in the West Bank, Jerusalem and across the Middle East.
Israeli forces rounded up 12 Palestinians, including a minor, in raids across the occupied West Bank overnight, the Palestinian Prisoners Society said, bringing the total number of such arrests to 10,100 since the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel that triggered the current violence.
Residents of a Bedouin hamlet in the southern West Bank said that Israeli military bulldozers had demolished six homes in the community, leaving 28 people homeless.
In the town of Tubas, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian, while an Israeli drone attack killed four more in Tammun.
Meanwhile, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that the government had approved the construction of a new settlement on a Unesco world heritage site in the West Bank.
All settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal under international law.
Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now denounced the plan, calling it a “wholesale attack” on an area “renowned for its ancient terraces and sophisticated irrigation systems, evidence of thousands of years of human activity.”
Some 700,000 Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem.
In Lebanon, Shi’ite resistance movement Hezbollah said it had fired rockets at a northern Israeli town today in retaliation for an air strike that wounded more than a dozen people.
Hezbollah and Israel have traded attacks since the war on Gaza began, with the Lebanese militant group vowing to continue until there is a ceasefire in Gaza.
In other developments, the United States has approved another $20 billion (£15.6bn) in weapons transfers to Israel, despite concerns that Israeli forces are routinely violating international law.
In a statement, Hamas said that the move “comes within the framework of unlimited [US] support and full adoption of the brutal aggressive behaviour of this rogue entity [Israel] from international regulations and laws.
“The continuation of the US administration’s financial and military support to the zionist entity confirms once again that it is a full partner in the war of genocide, ethnic cleansing and brutal massacres against our Palestinian people.”
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported that out of nearly 17,000 Palestinian children killed by Israel in the Gaza Strip since October 7, about 2,100 were babies under the age of two.
“[The killings] represents a dangerous trend based on the dehumanisation of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” it said.
“Israel’s military targets Palestinians and their children daily, methodically and widely in the most heinous and brutal ways possible and virtually without pause for 10 consecutive months.”
Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) demanded that Israel stop making “unproven claims that journalists slain by its forces are terrorists or engaging in militant activity.”
The US-based watchdog called for international, swift and independent investigations into these killings.
CPJ programme director Carlos Martinez de la Serna said: “Smear campaigns endanger journalists and erode public trust in the media.
“Israel must end this practice and allow independent international investigations into the journalists’ killings.
“Even before the start of the Israel-Gaza war, CPJ had documented Israel’s pattern of accusing journalists of being terrorists without producing credible evidence to substantiate their claims.”
