Israeli strikes kill dozens of Palestinians in Gaza, including in 'safe zone'

Israeli airstrikes killed more than 60 Palestinians in southern and central Gaza overnight and into Tuesday, as Israel and Hamas weigh the latest cease-fire proposal. One strike tore into a main street lined with market stalls in the heart of an Israeli-designated “safe zone” for displaced people. Another hit a U.N. school where families were sheltering.

Also Tuesday, Israeli police said officers shot and killed a 19-year-old Palestinian after he stabbed a police officer in the occupied West Bank, the latest in violence surging there since the start of the war in Gaza. And the Israeli military says it will begin sending draft notices to Jewish ultra-Orthodox men on Sunday, a step that could destabilize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

Hamas' Oct. 7 attack sparked the war when militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting about 250. Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 38,600 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. It does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.

Two international courts have accused Israel of war crimes and genocide – charges Israel denies. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are crammed into squalid tent camps in central and southern Gaza. Israeli restrictions, fighting and the breakdown of law and order have limited humanitarian aid efforts, causing widespread hunger and sparking fears of famine.

Currently:

— Israeli strikes in southern and central Gaza kill more than 60 Palestinians, including in ‘safe zone.’

— Far-right groups that block aid to Gaza receive tax-deductible donations from U.S. and Israel.

— Israeli military says it will begin drafting ultra-Orthodox men. That could rattle the government.

— Two attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels strike ships in the Red Sea.

— Israel targeted Hamas’ military leader in Gaza. Who is he and what does it mean for the war?

Here’s the latest:

JERUSALEM — Israel’s defense minister says Israel will soon replace the U.S. military’s offshore pier for delivering aid to the Gaza Strip with a dedicated facility in a southern Israeli port.

Defense Minister Yoav Galant said Tuesday that “Pier 28” will be established in Israel’s Ashdod port to help deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. He did not say when it would begin operating.

The American temporary pier, located off Gaza’s coast, has been beset by ongoing weather and security problems since it was installed in May. The U.S. has said it is winding down the project, although officials say it has been a success in delivering badly needed food aid to the territory.

Gallant announced the decision after a meeting with Army Gen. Erik Kurilla, the head of the U.S. Central Command.

“The minister emphasized the defense establishment’s commitment to working with international partners to ensure the entry of critical humanitarian aid to Gaza,” his office said.

Gallant’s office also said he has instructed the military to set up a field hospital in Israel to treat Palestinian children who are unable to leave Gaza for medical care abroad.

It said the decision was made because of the extended closure of Gaza’s Rafah crossing into Egypt. The crossing has been closed since Israeli forces captured it in early May. Egypt has refused to reopen the crossing while it remains under Israeli control.

“This is a significant short-term solution that will address immediate humanitarian needs until a permanent mechanism is established to evacuate and treat ill children,” his office said.

It was not clear when the hospital would open.

TEL AVIV, Israel — Families of five female Israeli soldiers held hostage in Gaza demanded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reach a deal with Hamas to release the captives. International mediators are pushing Israel and Hamas to agree to halt the war and free roughly 120 hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

On Tuesday evening, the parents of the soldiers released a photo taken in the early days of the girls’ captivity, showing them bruised and bloodied on mattress on the floor. One of the hostages, whose parents said she was kept separately, has a black eye and swollen face.

Ayelet Levy Shachar, mother of hostage soldier Naama Levy, said she had declined an invitation from Netanyahu to accompany him to Washington next week to address Congress. “I cannot and will not feel comfortable joining him until I see that the negotiations regarding my Naama’s release are completed,” she said Tuesday night.

During a press conference in Tel Aviv, other parents said they saw swelling and bruising on their daughters' wrists, which they said was evidence the women had been handcuffed for long periods of time.

Also on Tuesday evening, Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog were heckled at a state ceremony marking 10 years since the 2014 Israel-Gaza war, causing a delay in the ceremony.

In May, a group representing the families of hostages held in Gaza released video footage showing Hamas’ capture of five female Israeli soldiers near the Gaza border on Oct. 7. The video showed several of the young soldiers bloody and wounded.

The footage was taken by Hamas militants who stormed the Nahal Oz military base, as part of the wider assault on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and kidnapped 250 people.

The Israeli military has acknowledged a string of errors in its response to the Oct. 7 surprise attack, including slow response times and disorganization, as it released the results last week of its first investigation into failures during the assault that triggered the war in Gaza.

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency says two separate Israeli airstrikes in south Lebanon have killed five Syrian citizens, including three children.

NNA said the first drone strike Tuesday afternoon killed two Syrian citizens who were riding a motorcycle near the southern village of Kfar Tibnit.

It added that the three children were killed later in the day in an airstrike on an agricultural land in the village of Im al-Tout near the border.

On Monday, an Israeli airstrike on a home in the southern town of Bint Jbeil killed a member of the militant group Hezbollah and his two sisters.

Since the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza started on Oct. 7, Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon have killed over 450 people, mostly Hezbollah members but also include about 90 civilians and non-combatants. On the Israeli side, 21 soldiers and 13 civilians have been killed.

___ This story has been updated to correct the number of Israeli civilians who have died to 13, not 17.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — A court in The Hague has convicted a man of throwing a Molotov cocktail at a building that houses the Israeli Embassy in a protest against the war in Gaza.

The 25-year-old defendant, whose identity was not released in line with Dutch privacy rules, was sentenced Tuesday to 30 months for throwing a blazing bottle of gasoline at the building on March 21.

No one was injured in the attack. The bottle hit the outside of the first floor of the building, and the embassy is located on the fourth and fifth floors, The Hague District Court said in a statement.

“The suspect deliberately targeted the Israeli embassy. He said it was a protest action, because he wanted to draw attention to the situation in Gaza,” the court added, saying that the war “cannot provide any justification for his actions.”

TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israeli military is asserting that it has killed about half the leadership of Hamas’ military wing, including more than 175 top Hamas military commanders in assassinations or larger airstrikes. The statement comes as the status of Hamas’ top military commander, Mohammed Deif, remains unclear after an airstrike Saturday.

The military also claims it has killed more than 14,000 Hamas militants during the nine-month war in Gaza and struck around 37,000 targets during its punishing air campaign. The military says 25,000 of those sites were Hamas military infrastructure but others were civilian buildings such as hospitals, schools, and shelters that it asserts were “cynically exploited” by Hamas militants.

Israel has been widely condemned for strikes targeting civilian buildings. It has said the strikes are “conducted in accordance with international law” to prevent Hamas from rebuilding its military infrastructure within civilian areas.

The Israeli military says it will begin sending draft notices to Jewish ultra-Orthodox men on Sunday. The announcement follows a landmark Supreme Court order for young religious men to begin enlisting for military services.

Ultra-Orthodox men had been long exempt from the draft, which is compulsory for most Jewish men. The system under long-standing political arrangements had created widespread resentment among the general public in Israel, especially after more than nine months of war against Hamas militants in Gaza. The court ruled that the system of exemptions was discriminatory.

This could rattle the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which relies on the support of ultra-Orthodox parties that oppose changes to the system. It also could cause new unrest in ultra-Orthodox communities.

Tuesday's deadliest Israeli airstrike has hit near a gas station in Muwasi, a southern coastal region that's part of the humanitarian “safe zone” where the Israeli military has told Palestinians to take refuge.

Officials at Nasser Hospital in nearby Khan Younis say 17 people were killed. The areas nearby are packed with tent camps housing thousands of Palestinians.

There is no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strike.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Hospital records show that Israeli strikes in central Gaza killed 24 people overnight into Tuesday.

The strikes in Nuseirat and Zawaida killed 10 women and four children, the records from Al Aqsa hospital show. The Israeli military said it “conducted targeted raids on terror targets” in central Gaza, without elaborating. Another nine people were killed in strikes in southern Gaza late Monday, according to medical officials.

The deadly violence comes as Israel and Hamas are weighing the latest cease-fire proposal. International mediators are working to push the two sides toward agreeing to a deal that would bring a halt to the devastating fighting and set free roughly 120 hostages still held by the militant group in Gaza.

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli police said officers shot and killed a Palestinian after he stabbed a police officer Tuesday in the occupied West Bank.

Police said the officer was lightly wounded in the attack and identified the Palestinian as a 19-year-old from the Gaza Strip. It wasn’t immediately clear what he was doing in the West Bank.

Earlier Tuesday, the Israeli military said Palestinians opened fire on a car in the West Bank, lightly injuring a number of Israeli civilians. In a separate event in the territory, the military said forces opened fire on a “suspicious vehicle” that turned out to belong to an Israeli. Two Israeli civilians were lightly wounded as a result of the apparent mistaken fire, the military said.

The bloodshed is part of a wave of violence surging in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed in the territory during that time, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, most of them in fighting with Israeli forces. Others were killed while throwing stones, or in protests against the military. Some of those killed were not involved in confrontations with Israeli forces. Palestinian attacks against Israelis in the West Bank have also been on the rise since the war broke out.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Two attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels targeted ships in the Red Sea over the past day, the United States Central Command confirmed Tuesday.

Three small Houthi vessels, two of which were crewed and another uncrewed, attacked the Panama-flagged and Israeli-owned MT Bently I off the coast of Al Hudaydah, Yemen, according to British and American authorities. The captain later reported three separate waves of missile attacks that exploded in close proximity to the vessel.

Later on Monday, in a separate incident off the same coast, the MT Chios Lion, a Liberian-flagged and Marshall Islands-owned oil tanker, was attacked by an uncrewed Houthi aerial vehicle, which “impacted on the port side causing some damage and light smoke,” the the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said.

Both ships and all crew were reported safe, the UKMTO said in a warning to mariners.

Late Monday, the Houthis claimed responsibility for the attacks on Bently I and Chios Lion, and the U.S. Central Command confirmed the attacks and identified the names and flags of the ship early Tuesday.

The Houthis maintain that their attacks target ships linked to Israel, the United States or Britain, as part of the rebels’ support for the militant group Hamas in its war against Israel. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the war — including some bound for Iran, which backs the Houthis.