Israeli strikes kill 6 in Gaza, including kids and UN worker

Separate Israeli airstrikes killed at least six people on Friday in central Gaza, including two children at a home and at least one United Nations worker, Palestinian hospital officials and first responders said, even as stalled cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas show signs of renewed momentum.

Four out of every five people in Gaza — nearly 2 million Palestinians — have been driven into the territory's center by expanding Israeli military offensives and evacuation orders, the army estimated earlier this week. Civilians are taking shelter in makeshift tent camps and crowded urban areas, and many have been displaced multiple times.

Violence also flared Friday in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces killed seven people in a raid and an airstrike, according to Palestinian health officials. And on the Israel-Lebanon border, rockets fired by the group Hezbollah lightly wounded two Israeli soldiers, the army said, as concerns grow that these low-level clashes could escalate into a wider regional war.

An Israeli strike near the Maghazi refugee camp killed three adults and injured several others on Salah al-Din road, a major thoroughfare in Gaza, according to witnesses and officials at Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah. At least one of the dead was wearing a UN vest when brought to the hospital.

A man carries the body of a child killed by Israeli bombardment in Khan Yunis on Friday. AFP

An adult and two kids were also killed by a strike in the Nuseirat refugee camp, officials at the hospital said. That strike hit a home, according to the Palestinian Civil Defense rescue service.

Ambulances blared their horns as they rolled up to the medical center's doors Friday evening, unloading the three bodies wrapped in thick household blankets. Laid out in the morgue, an Associated Press journalist observed the man's bloodstained blue-and-white vest of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

At least one wounded man was also wearing a UNRWA vest. "Stand back a little, guys!” a man in a green medical uniform told a small crowd that gathered beside the ambulance. "Thank God you're safe,” another man said as the wounded worker was brought inside.

Associated Press