By james art The Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service said 11 women and two children were among those killed in the strikes late Saturday in the northern city of Beit Lahiya.
According to him, 15 more people were injured and that the number of victims could rise.
In another incident, a truck plowed into a bus stop near Tel Aviv, injuring dozens of people, according to Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service. The attack took place on a road near the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad spy agency.
The circumstances were not immediately clear, but Palestinians have carried out dozens of vehicle attacks over the years.
In Beit Lahiya, the Israeli military said it carried out a precision strike against militants in a structure and took steps to avoid injuring civilians. He disputed what he said were “numbers published by the media”.
Israel has been waging an air and ground offensive in northern Gaza for the past three weeks after it said Hamas fighters had regrouped there.
Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled to Gaza City in the latest wave of displacement in the year-long war.
Israel carries out daily airstrikes in Gaza, even though it is at war with the Hezbollah group in Lebanon.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Saturday that continued Israeli evacuation orders and restrictions on the entry of essential supplies to the north had put the civilian population in “horrendous circumstances”.
“Many civilians are currently unable to move, trapped by fighting, destruction or physical limitations and now unable to access even basic medical care,” it said.
On Saturday, Israeli warplanes attacked Iran – which backs both Hamas and Hezbollah – in response to an Iranian ballistic missile attack earlier this month.
The cascading conflicts have raised fears of an all-out regional war, pitting Israel and the United States against Iran and its militant backers, which also include the Houthi rebels in Yemen and armed groups in Syria and Iraq.
Israel says its strikes on Gaza are aimed only at militants and blames Hamas for civilian casualties as the militants fight in densely populated areas. The military rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.
The war began when Hamas-led militants punched holes in Israel’s border wall and invaded southern Israel in a surprise attack in October 2023. They killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped about 250. About 100 hostages are still in Gaza , about a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry. He did not distinguish between civilians and combatants in his count, but said more than half of those killed were women and children.
The offensive has devastated much of the impoverished coastal territory and displaced around 90% of its population, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands of people are crammed into squalid tent camps along the coast, and aid groups say starvation is widespread.