Sawt Falasteen - Gaza rescuers say Israeli strikes kill 22 Palestinians

Qatar-based news channel Al Jazeera said its cameraman Ahmed al-Louh was killed "in an Israeli bombardment" that targeted Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal confirmed Louh had been killed in the strike that "targeted the Civil Defence site" in Nuseirat camp, also killing three members of the rescue agency.

Israel's military, when contacted by AFP for comment, said it is "looking into the reports".

Bassal earlier told AFP that rescuers working through the night recovered the bodies of 18 people. He said dozens more were injured in the "ongoing aggression and Israeli aerial and artillery bombardment" across Gaza.

The dead included at least three children, Bassal said, adding four people were killed in an Israeli air strike targeting a house in central Gaza City.

Another four were killed, and eight injured, when an Israeli missile hit a tent sheltering dozens of displaced people in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

AFP photographs showed distraught relatives mourning the bodies of loved ones at a hospital in Gaza City. Some corpses lay on the floor covered in blankets.

On Saturday, Bassal said that Deir el-Balah's mayor, Diab al-Jaro, was killed in a similar strike.

The Israeli military later claimed responsibility for that attack, saying Jaro had been "an operative in Hamas's military wing".

On Sunday, the military confirmed it had carried out strikes in the Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia areas.

"The troops struck dozens of terrorists from both the air and ground and additional terrorists were apprehended" in Beit Hanoun, it said.

"In Beit Lahia, troops eliminated terrorists and located and dismantled large quantities of weapons, including explosives and dozens of grenades," Israel's military said.

The statement did not specify when these operations took place.

- 'Collapsed' health system -

The military also said they targeted a clinic in northern Gaza, accusing Hamas of using it as a "command and control centre" and storage site for weapons.

Louh is the fifth Al Jazeera journalist to be killed since the war in Gaza began, and the network's office in the territory has been bombed.

The war has displaced the vast majority of Gaza's 2.4 million population, with many people forced to flee multiple times.

The Israeli military has been conducting a large-scale operation in northern Gaza for several weeks, stating that its objective is to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping.

In early December, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres highlighted the devastating toll of the conflict and the urgent need for international action.

"Malnutrition is rampant... Famine is imminent. Meanwhile, the health system has collapsed," Guterres said.

Medics in Gaza report severe shortages of medicines in hospitals amid the ongoing military assault.

The fighting has also resulted in casualties among medical workers, further straining the health care system.

"We are suffering from a shortage of medical staff as a result of the targeting and the martyrdom of a large number of doctors and nurses," said Hossam Abu Safiyeh, director of Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, in a statement to journalists.

He said Israeli air strikes and shelling continued to target the hospital and surrounding areas, exacerbating the crisis and endangering both patients and staff.

Israel's military has denied targeting the hospital directly.

The war in the Gaza Strip was sparked by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Since then, Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 44,976 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

Q.Jaber--SF-PST