By WAFAA SHURAFA and JULIA FRANKEL
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The death toll from Israeli strikes in the central Gaza Strip rose to 25, including five children, as more bodies have been recovered, while three people were killed in an early morning airstrike near the Lebanese capital, officials said Friday.
Sixteen people had initially been reported killed in two strikes on Thursday on the Gaza Strip’s central Nuseirat refugee camp, but officials from the Al-Aqsa hospital said bodies continued to be brought in.
Overall, the hospital said they had received 21 dead bodies from the strikes, including some transferred from the Awda hospital, where they had been brought the day before.
One of the strikes killed an 18-month-old and his 10-year-old sister — the children’s mother was missing as of Friday and the father was killed by an Israeli airstrike four months ago, the family told AP journalists at Aqsa hospital.
Strikes on a motorcycle in Zuwaida and on a house in Deir al-Balah on Friday killed four more, the hospital officials said, bringing the overall toll to 25.
The Israeli military did not comment on the specific strikes but said it had killed armed militants in central and southern Gaza Thursday.
Israel’s blistering offensive on the Gaza Strip has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians since October 7, 2023, say health officials inside Gaza who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. They say more than half of the dead are women and children.
The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Friday that a total of 55 people had been killed in the past 24 hours and that another 196 had been wounded.
Israel began bombarding Gaza after the Hamas attack on Israel Oct. 7, when the militants killed roughly 1,200 people and took some 250 hostages back to Gaza.
Despite growing pressure from the United States and others in the international community for a cease fire both in Gaza and Lebanon, Israel’s air force pounded Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh overnight, destroying dozens of buildings in several neighborhoods, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency.
The early Friday airstrikes on Dahiyeh — after a four-day lull during which no airstrikes were reported in the suburb — destroyed dozens of buildings and caused fires in the area, the agency said.
In recent days, Israel has intensified its airstrikes on the northeastern city of Baalbek and nearby villages, as well as different parts of southern Lebanon.
Early Friday, an Israeli airstrike on the edge of Qamatiyeh, southeast of Beirut, killed three people and wounded five, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.
An Associated Press journalist who visited the scene said the strike was closer to the nearby village of Ein al-Rummaneh, adding that it caused minor damage to an apartment on the first floor of a building.
Lebanon’s Heath Ministry said more than 2,800 people have been killed and 13,000 wounded since Oct. 8, 2023, when Hezbollah began firing rockets almost daily into Israel, drawing retaliation.
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Frankel reported from Jerusalem. Bassem Mroue in Beirut and David Rising in Bangkok contributed to this story.
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