Le Pays De France - Gaza ministry says Israel forces detaining hundreds at hospital

The Israeli military said its forces were operating around Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabalia refugee camp in north Gaza, where it launched a major operation earlier this month.

In south Gaza, Israeli air strikes hit two homes in the city of Khan Yunis at dawn, killing at least 20 people, many of them children, Gaza's civil defence agency said.

At Kamal Adwan Hospital, Israeli troops were "detaining hundreds of patients, medical staff and some displaced individuals from neighbouring areas who sought refuge," the health ministry said.

The World Health Organization said it had lost contact with staff at the hospital on Friday.

"This development is deeply disturbing given the number of patients being served and people sheltering there," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body responsible for civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, said it had allowed the transfer of 23 patients out of the hospital on Wednesday night.

Tedros confirmed that 23 patients and their carers had been transferred to another hospital.

The Israeli military has come under strong criticism for its operation in north Gaza, where tens of thousands of civilians are trapped.

The military says the goal of the assault is to destroy the operational capabilities it says Hamas is trying to rebuild in the north.

- 'Darkest moment' of war -

UN rights chief Volker Turk said that what was unfolding in north Gaza was the "darkest moment" of the war.

"The Israeli government's policies and practices in northern Gaza risk emptying the area of all Palestinians," he said.

"We are facing what could amount to atrocity crimes, including potentially extending to crimes against humanity."

In the south Gaza city of Khan Yunis, 14 people were killed -- including nine children -- in a strike that hit the Al-Fara family home, the civil defence agency's Mahmud Bassal said.

"The rocket fell next to us, and we were buried under the rubble," Umm al-Ameer al-Fara, who survived the first strike, told AFP.

"My children and sister were killed."

AFP photographs showed relatives at the European hospital in Khan Yunis mourning the deaths of children, the bodies of several of them wrapped in white shrouds.

Another strike on the city killed six people, Bassal said.

The Israeli military said "a number of terrorists were eliminated" in south Gaza.

- Three journalists killed -

Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack which triggered the Gaza war resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed 42,847 people, the majority civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.

After a nearly a year of rocket fire from Lebanon by Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, Israel expanded its focus to the Hamas ally last month in a bid to secure its northern border.

Two people died in northern Israel after being wounded by shrapnel from a rocket barrage from Lebanon on Friday, the hospital and the army said.

At least 1,580 people have been killed in Lebanon since all-out war broke out on September 23, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures.

On Friday, Lebanon accused Israel of targeting journalists in a "deliberate" attack that killed three media workers in the south.

Asked by AFP for comment on the strike, the Israeli military has not yet responded.

Pro-Iran Lebanese television channel Al Mayadeen said cameraman Ghassan Najjar and broadcast engineer Mohammad Reda were killed in the strike on a journalists' residence in Hasbaya.

Another TV outlet, Al-Manar, run by Hezbollah, said video journalist Wissam Qassem was also killed in the strike on a bungalow located in a complex that several media organisations covering the war had rented out.

- 'Asleep in our rooms' -

Journalists from other media organisations were also sleeping nearby when the strike hit, in an area outside Hezbollah's traditional strongholds.

"I woke up to the whistling sound of a missile and found my door burst open while thick smoke rose from the garden. I thought there was a fire," Sky News Arabia correspondent Darine El Helwe told AFP.

"We were asleep in our rooms, without our bulletproof vests and helmets," she said.

Lebanon's Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the "deliberate" attack was among the "war crimes committed by the Israeli enemy".

Earlier, Information Minister Ziad Makary said Israel had "waited for the journalists' nighttime break" to strike while they slept.

The Israeli military said it had struck more than 200 militant targets in Lebanon over the past day, as it announced the deaths of five soldiers in fighting in the south.

It also said three soldiers were killed in combat in north Gaza.

The Israeli military said it had conducted strikes on "several weapons storage facilities and command centres" in Hezbollah's south Beirut stronghold.

It confirmed it struck a northern border crossing between Lebanon and Syria, accusing Hezbollah of moving weapons through it.

Hezbollah said it hit three Israeli tanks in clashes in two villages near the border. It said it also launched a drone attack at a military base in northern Israel.

(M.LaRue--LPdF)