SIDON (Lebanon), Apr 04 (AFP): At least 112 Palestinians reported killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza in the past day, including mostly women and children among 33 slain in three separate attacks on schools sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza City.
The Doctors Without Borders (MSF) medical charity said on Friday that another of its staff members had been killed in war-ravaged Gaza, killed in an airstrike along with family members.
MSF said it was "appalled and saddened by the killing of our colleague Hussam Al Loulou by an airstrike on the morning of 1 April".
"Our colleague Hussam was killed along with hundreds of others across the Gaza Strip since the resumption of attacks by Israeli forces on 18 March," MSF said. The 58-year-old watchman at MSF's urgent care unit in Khan Yunis was killed along with his wife and 28-year-old daughter in the "horrendous attack" southwest of Deir Al Balah in central Gaza, MSF said.
Meanwhile, Israel killed a commander of Palestinian militant group Hamas on Friday in a pre-dawn strike in the Lebanese port city of Sidon that also killed his adult son and daughter.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam condemned the strike as a "flagrant attack on Lebanese sovereignty" and a breach of the November 27 ceasefire with Israel.
"Overnight, the (army and the domestic security agency Shin Bet) conducted a targeted strike in the Sidon area, eliminating the terrorist Hassan Farhat, commander of Hamas's western arena in Lebanon," the Israeli military said in a statement.
It said that Farhat had orchestrated multiple attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians during the hostilities that followed the outbreak of war in Gaza in October 2023.
They included rocket fire on the Israeli town of Safed on February 14, 2024 that killed an Israeli soldier, the military added.
Hamas's military wing, the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, confirmed in a statement released in Gaza that Farhat had been killed in the strike along with his son Hamza, who was also a member, and his adult daughter Jenan.
The Lebanese prime minister called for "maximum pressure on Israel to force it to halt these continual attacks which target various districts, many of them residential areas".
Israel expands ground
offensive in Gaza City
Israel announced the launch of a new ground offensive in Gaza City on Friday, with rescuers saying military operations had killed at least 30 people across the Palestinian territory since dawn.
Israel has pushed since the collapse of a short-lived truce in the war with Hamas to seize territory in Gaza in what it has called a strategy to force the militants to free hostages still in captivity.
Simultaneously, Israel has escalated attacks on Lebanon and Syria, with a strike in the south Lebanese city of Sidon killing a Hamas commander along with his son, who was also a member of the militant group's armed wing.
In Gaza City, the Israeli military said ground troops had begun conducting operations in the Shujaiya area "in order to expand the security zone".
Gaza's civil defence agency said that Israeli military operations had killed at least 30 people in the Palestinian territory since dawn, adding that the toll was "not final".
Deadly fire on Gaza ambulances
possible Israeli 'war crimes': UN
The death of 15 medics and humanitarian workers in Gaza after shots were fired at their ambulances raises further concerns of "war crimes by the Israeli army," the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said on Thursday.
"I am appalled by the recent killings of 15 medical personnel and humanitarian aid workers, which raise further concerns over the commission of war crimes by the Israeli military," Volker Turk told the UN Security Council.
Turk called for an "independent, prompt and thorough investigation" into the March 23 incident that Israeli officials have claimed was an attack on "terrorists."
The bodies of 15 rescuers and humanitarian workers, including eight from the Palestinian Red Crescent and one from the UN, were found near Rafah in what the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) called a "mass grave."
OCHA said Tuesday the first team was killed by Israeli forces on March 23, and that other emergency and aid teams were struck one after another for several hours as they searched for their missing colleagues.
This is "one of the darkest moments in this conflict that has shaken our shared humanity to its core," said the president of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society Younes Al-Khatib before the UN Security Council on Thursday.
