DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli airstrike on a hospital courtyard in the Gaza Strip early Monday killed at least four people and sparked a fire that spread through a people's tent camp driven out by the warAccording to Palestinian doctors, more than two dozen suffered severe burns.

The Israeli military said it was targeting militants hiding among civilians, without providing evidence. In recent months there have been repeated overcrowded accommodations and tent camps, with allegations that Hamas fighters had used them as a target.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in downtown Deir al-Balah was already struggling to treat large numbers of wounded in an earlier attack on a school-turned-shelter that killed at least 20 people when the air raid hit early in the morning and fire engulfed many of the tents.

Several secondary explosions were heard after the initial impact, but it was not immediately clear whether they were caused by weapons or fuel tanks.

Associated Press footage showed children among the wounded. A man sobbed as he carried a toddler with a bandaged head. Another small child with a bandaged leg received a blood transfusion on the floor of the crowded hospital.

Hospital records showed four people were killed and 40 were injured. According to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, 25 people were transferred to Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza after suffering severe burns.

Israel is still carrying out almost daily attacks across the Gaza Strip more than a year after the war began and is carrying out a major ground assault in the north, where militants are said to have regrouped.

The war began when Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, while Palestinian militants kidnapped about 250 hostages. About 100 people are still held in the Gaza Strip, a third of whom are believed to be dead.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, over 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's retaliatory offensive. Gaza's health ministry did not say how many were fighters, but said more than half of those killed were women and children. Around 90% of Gaza's 2.3 million residents have been displaced by the war. often multiple timesand large parts of the coastal area were completely destroyed.

Israel has ordered the entire remaining population of the northern third of the Gaza Strip, estimated at about 400,000 people, to evacuate to the south and has stopped allowing food to reach the north since the beginning of the month. Hundreds of thousands of people from the north followed Israeli evacuation orders at the start of the war and were not allowed to return.

That has raised fears among Palestinians that Israel intends to implement it a plan by former generals In doing so, it would expel all civilians from the northern Gaza Strip and designate anyone who remains there as a combatant – a surrender-or-starve strategy that human rights groups say would violate international law. The plan was submitted to the Israeli government, but it is unclear whether it was accepted.

With no end to the war in Gaza in sight, Israel is also waging an air and ground war in southern Lebanon against the militant Hezbollah group, an ally of Hamas, which has been firing rockets into northern Israel for more than a year. Israel has also threatened to attack Iran in retaliation for a ballistic missile attack, raising the prospect of an all-out war across the region.

A Hezbollah airstrike on an army base in northern Israel killed four soldiers – all 19 years old – and seriously injured seven others on Sunday, the military said. It was the militant group's deadliest attack since Israel almost began its ground invasion of Lebanon two weeks ago.

Hezbollah described the attack near the town of Binyamina as retaliation Israeli attacks on Beirut On Thursday, 22 people were killed. It said it targeted Israel's elite Golani Brigade and fired dozens of missiles during the drone strike to occupy Israeli air defense systems.

According to the Israeli emergency service, 61 people were injured in the attack. It is rare for so many people to be injured by drones or missiles. Most of them are intercepted by Israel's multi-tiered air defenses or fall in open areas.

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Magdy reported from Cairo.

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