Israel steps up bombing of central Gaza, strikes kill 17 people

Cairo: Israeli military strikes killed at least 17 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, medics said, as forces stepped up their bombardment of central areas and tanks pushed deeper into the north and south of the enclave.

The escalation came a day after Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah started to observe a ceasefire in Lebanon, ending more than a year of hostilities and raising hopes among Palestinians in Gaza for a similar deal with Hamas, which rules the enclave.

Six people were killed in two separate air strikes on a house and near the hospital of Kamal Adwan in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, while four others were killed when an Israeli strike hit a motorcycle in Khan Younis in the south.

In Nuseirat, one of Gaza's eight historic refugee camps, Israeli planes carried out several air strikes, destroying a multi-storey building and hitting roads outside mosques. At least seven were killed in those strikes, health officials said.

Medics said at least two people, a woman and a child, were killed in tank shelling that hit western areas of Nuseirat, while an air strike killed five others in a house nearby.

In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, tanks pushed deeper into the northwest area of the city, residents said.

There has been no Israeli comment on the latest fighting.

Israel's 13-month campaign in Gaza, with the avowed intent of eradicating Hamas militants, has killed nearly 44,200 people and displaced nearly all the enclave's population at least once, Gaza officials say. Vast swathes of the territory are in ruins.

The war was launched in response to an attack by Hamas-led fighters who killed around 1,200 people and captured more than 250 hostages in Israel on October 7, 2023, Israel has said.

Ceasefire hopes in Gaza

Months of efforts to negotiate a ceasefire have yielded scant progress, and negotiations are now on hold. Mediator Qatar has suspended its efforts until the sides are prepared to make concessions.

A ceasefire in the parallel conflict between Israel and Hamas' Lebanese ally Hezbollah took effect before dawn on Wednesday, bringing a halt to hostilities that had escalated sharply in recent months and overshadowed the conflict in Gaza.

Announcing the Lebanon accord on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden said he would now renew his push for an elusive agreement in Gaza, urging Israel and Hamas to seize the moment.

The Lebanon truce has made the sense of desperation and abandonment even more acute among Gaza's 2.3 million people.

"I hope a ceasefire will happen like it did in Lebanon... I just want to take my children to see my land, my house, to see what they did to us, I want to live in safety," said Amal Abu Hmeid, a displaced woman in Gaza.

"God willing we will have a truce," she said, sitting in the courtyard of a school sheltering displaced families in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

The courtyard was filled with dirt and water from where people did their laundry. Clothes were airing outside classrooms as children played nearby.

"(Life) was beautiful (before the war)... Now there is nothing beautiful, it's all gone. Our houses are gone, our brothers are gone, and no one is left. Now we hardly get... one meal a day. We can’t even get bread," Abu Hmeid told Reuters.