An injured boy lies on the floor at a trauma ward at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday.— AFP CAIRO/GAZA July 16 (Reuters): Israeli forces battled Hamas-led fighters in several parts of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, and Palestinian health officials said at least 50 people were killed in Israeli bombardments of southern and central areas.
The Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas has accused Israel of stepping up attacks in Gaza to try to derail efforts by Arab mediators and the United States to reach a ceasefire deal. Israel says it is trying to root out Hamas fighters.
In Rafah, a southern border city where Israeli forces have been operating since May, five Palestinians were killed in an airstrike on a house, the Gaza health officials said. In nearby Khan Younis, a man, his wife, and two children were killed, they said. Later on Tuesday, an Israeli airstrike on a car killed at least 17 Palestinians and wounded 26 others in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Tuesday, the officials said.
The airstrike hit near a tented area housing displaced families in Attar Street, the health ministry said.
In the historic Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, at least four Palestinians were killed in separate shelling and aerial strikes in central Gaza, medics said. An Israeli airstrike killed four in Sheikh Zayed in northern Gaza, they said.
Hours later, an Israeli air strike on a school in the Nuseirat camp killed 16 people and wounded many others, health officials said. The strike hit a UN-run school, which housed displaced families, the ministry said.
It said the Israeli air force had struck around 40 targets across the enclave, including sniping and observation posts, military structures, and buildings rigged with explosives.
At least 38,713 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's retaliatory offensive since then, Gaza health authorities said in their latest update on Tuesday. Israel also says 326 of its soldiers have been killed in Gaza.
Waste crisis deepens misery
in Gaza as war rages
Bulldozers plough through piles of waste, but angry residents find little relief as their children sift through garbage on Gaza's streets in a growing sanitation crisis that's adding to the misery of war.
"We can't sleep, we can't eat, we can't drink, the smell is killing us," said Ahmed Shaloula, one of many displaced Palestinians, who is from Gaza City and lives in Khan Younis.
Palestinians have faced one crisis after another since the conflict erupted between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in October. Aside from Israeli air strikes, shelling and a ground offensive, Palestinians are crippled by shortages of food, fuel, water, medicine and functioning hospitals.
Garbage is piling up in the impoverished enclave-one of the world's most densely populated places-which has been reduced mostly to rubble. At night, people stay awake fighting mosquitoes and some are catching diseases like scabies, Shaloula said.
"We are calling on the municipality of Khan Younis to remove the waste."
Israel bombs Gaza after US
criticises high civilian toll
Israel kept up its bombing of Gaza Tuesday, after its key military backer the United States renewed criticism of its ally over the high civilian casualty toll of the war.
Residents told AFP of Israeli warplanes striking central Gaza and artillery fire hitting the territory's south, while medics said they pulled multiple bodies from the rubble of the latest bombardment.
Hours earlier, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told two top Israeli officials that casualties among Palestinian civilians "still remain unacceptably high".
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