Israeli forces killed at least 24 Palestinians in three separate airstrikes on Gaza City early on Tuesday and the dead included a sister of Ismail Haniyeh, the chief of militant Islamist group Hamas, Gaza health officials and medics said.

Israeli tanks also pressed deeper overnight into western areas of Rafah in the enclave’s south, blowing up homes, residents said.

Two of the Israeli airstrikes hit two schools in Gaza City, killing at least 14 people, medics said. Another strike on a house in the Shati (Beach) camp, one of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, killed 10 others.

The house in Shati belonged to the extended family of Hamas political chief Haniyeh, who is based in Qatar. One of his sisters was killed along with other relatives, family members and medics said.

Haniyeh, who leads Hamas diplomacy and is the public face of the group that has run Gaza since 2007, has lost many relatives in Israeli airstrikes since Oct. 7, including three sons.

Responding to the latest Israeli attack that killed his sister, Haniyeh reaffirmed the group’s demands for reaching a ceasefire agreement with Israel and said killing relatives would not influence Hamas actions.

“We still maintain that any agreement that does not guarantee a ceasefire and an end to the aggression is not an agreement. Our position on this will not change at any stage,” Haniyeh said in a statement.

Hassan Kaskin, a neighbour, said the Haniyeh family house was hit without advance warning before dawn on Tuesday. Footage obtained by Reuters showed the multi-floor building reduced to rubble.

“They were 10 individuals, three of them were scattered outside the house and seven under the rubble – with no prior warning, with people around them, and there are injuries among the neighbours,” Kaskin told Reuters.

Israel’s military said its forces had targeted militants overnight in Gaza City who had been involved in the planning of attacks on Israel. The militants, it said, included some who had seized hostages as they took part in the Hamas-led cross-border attack on Israel on Oct. 7 last year.

The Israeli Air Force bombed two structures “used by Hamas terrorists in Shati and Daraj Tuffah in the northern Gaza Strip. The terrorists operated inside school compounds that were used by Hamas as a shield for its terrorist activities”, the military said in a statement.

Hamas denies using civilian facilities such as schools and hospitals for military purposes.

Separately, the armed wings of Hamas and the allied Islamic Jihad said in a joint statement their fighters had fired mortar bombs overnight against Israeli forces in the Yibna neighbourhood of eastern Rafah.

In the city of Khan Younis to Rafah’s north, medics said Israeli tank shelling killed seven Palestinians and wounded several other people at a tent camp in a western district.

Gaza health officials said at least 45 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli military strikes across the densely populated coastal enclave on Tuesday.

The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) said chaos was taking hold in Gaza as smuggling bands form, adding to the difficulties of delivering sorely needed aid to the territory.

A high risk of famine also persists across the Gaza Strip as the conflict rages on unabated and humanitarian access remains restricted, a global hunger monitor said on Tuesday.

HEZBOLLAH CONFLICT

Over eight months into the war, international mediation backed by the U.S. has failed to yield a ceasefire agreement. Hamas says any deal must bring an end to the war and full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, while Israel says it will accept only temporary pauses in fighting until Hamas is eradicated.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday the phase of intense fighting against Hamas would end “very soon”, freeing up more forces for deployment on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, where clashes with Iran-backed Hezbollah have escalated.

Israel’s national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said on Tuesday it would spend the coming weeks trying to resolve the conflict with Hezbollah and would prefer a diplomatic solution there. Shelling has led to the evacuation of tens of thousands of people on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border.

Israel’s ground and air campaign in Gaza was triggered when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

The Israeli offensive in retaliation has so far killed 37,658 people, the Gaza health ministry said on Tuesday, and has left the tiny, heavily built-up Gaza Strip in ruins.

Since early May, ground fighting has focused on Rafah, abutting Egypt on Gaza’s southern edge, where around half of the enclave’s 2.3 million people had been sheltering after fleeing other areas. Most have since had to flee again.

Gaza’s health ministry said on Tuesday that hospitals and medical centres in the enclave were experiencing a severe shortage of medicines and medical supplies due to the continued Israeli offensive, Israel’s control and closure of all crossings and its targeting of the health sector in Gaza.

In particularly short supply are medications needed for emergency, anaesthesia, intensive care and operations, the ministry said in a statement. – Reuters

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Iranians choose a president on Friday in a tightly controlled election following Ebrahim Raisi’s death in a helicopter crash last month, with the outcome expected to influence the succession to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s top decision-maker.

With Iran’s supreme leader now 85, it is likely that the next president will be closely involved in the eventual process of choosing a successor to Khamenei, who has ensured candidates sharing his hardline views dominate the presidential contest, Reuters reported.

The election coincides with escalating regional tensions due to the Israel-Hamas conflict, increased Western pressure on Iran over its rapidly advancing nuclear programme, and growing domestic dissent over political, social, and economic crises.

However, the looming succession to the fiercely anti-Western Khamenei is the overriding concern among Iran’s clerical elite, Reuters reported.

The Guardian Council, a vetting body of clerics and jurists aligned to Khamenei, has approved five hardline and one low-profile moderate candidates from an initial pool of 80.

Iran’s presidential election comes after the death of president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash last month

Prominent among the hardliners are Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, parliament speaker and former head of the powerful Revolutionary Guards, and Saeed Jalili, a former nuclear negotiator.

The sole moderate candidate, Massoud Pezeshkian, has the endorsement of Iran’s politically-sidelined reformist camp.

Khamenei has not backed any candidate publicly. However, his adviser Yahya Rahim Safavi has urged voters to elect “a president whose views do not conflict with those of the supreme leader,” state media reported.

“The people should choose a president who considers himself the second in command … The president should not create division,” said Safavi, a former chief commander of the Guards.

While the president’s role has a high international profile, real power rests with the supreme leader, who has the final say on state matters like foreign or nuclear policies and controls all branches of government, the military, media and the bulk of financial resources.

Raisi was widely seen as a potential successor to Khamenei, and his sudden death has sparked a race among hard liners seeking to influence the selection of Iran’s next top leader.

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Egypt withdrew the operating licenses of 16 tourism companies and referred them to the public prosecutor, accusing them of being responsible for the deaths of Egyptian pilgrims in Mecca, a crisis unit tasked with addressing the situation said on Saturday.

Medical and security sources say at least 530 Egyptians died during this year’s hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, while the statement from the unit, formed on Thursday and headed by prime minister Mostafa Madbouly, said 31 deaths were confirmed as a result of chronic illness, Reuters reported.

The tourism companies which facilitated the travel of those who died did not provide them with services of any kind, including medical, the statement said without naming the companies involved.

The agencies are being blamed for sending pilgrims to Saudi on personal visit visas, rather than hajj visas that allow access to Mecca where hajj rituals take place.

Medical services offered by Saudi authorities to alleviate the hardships of the pilgrimage are not offered to those traveling with a personal visa.

The pilgrims who died had to walk through the desert into Mecca to avoid arrest or deportation, the statement added.

Egyptian authorities also say those travel agencies did not provide the pilgrims with “appropriate accommodation,” adding that this caused pilgrims’ “exhaustion due to the high temperatures.”

Egyptian authorities also documented 31 deaths among registered Egyptian pilgrims, citing “chronic diseases” as the cause of deaths, Reuters reported.

Most of those who died were unregistered, the statement said.

In recent days hundreds of people from different countries have died in punishing conditions for the hajj pilgrimage in the Saudi city, where temperatures have at times exceeded 51 degrees Celsius.

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