CAIRO: At least 17 Palestinians were killed and 50 were wounded in Israeli strikes on Gaza City in the early hours of Sunday morning, civil emergency and health officials said.
The fatalities resulted from at least four separate Israeli airstrikes on four houses in different areas of the city. Residents and Palestinian health officials said the Israeli military had stepped up aerial and ground shelling.
On Saturday an Israeli airstrike killed at least 90 Palestinians in a designated humanitarian zone in Gaza, the enclave's health ministry said. The attack was the deadliest in Gaza for weeks.
Israel said the attack targeted Palestinian Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif but it was uncertain whether he had been killed. Hamas said that Israeli claims it had targeted leaders of the group were false and were aimed at justifying the attack.
The Israeli military said that Rafa Salama, Hamas' Khan Younis brigade commander, was killed in an air strike on Saturday that also targeted the head of the group's armed wing.
The military said Salama was one of Deif's closest associates and was involved in planning Oct. 7 attack. His death, "significantly impedes Hamas' military capabilities," the military said. Hamas has not confirmed Salama's fate.
Several Palestinians were killed or wounded on Sunday in an Israeli airstrike that hit a school in central Gaza, health officials said.
The Gaza government media office has so far put the death toll at 12 people killed, adding that the school was housing displaced people.
Meanwhile, Britain's new foreign secretary, David Lammy, will press for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the release of captives during a trip to Israel and occupied Palestinian territories on Sunday, the foreign office said. Lammy will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and make the case for a "credible and irreversible pathway towards a two-state solution", the foreign office said in a statement.
"The death and destruction in Gaza is intolerable. This war must end now, with an immediate ceasefire, complied with by both sides," Lammy said. He will raise with Netanyahu the issue of 680 tonnes of British aid that is waiting to enter Gaza, the foreign office said.
Lammy's Labour Party has said long-term peace and security in the Middle East would be an immediate focus. It has committed to recognising a Palestinian state as a contribution to a renewed peace process which results in a two-state solution. — Reuters
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