CAIRO: Israeli forces killed at least 15 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, including a rescue worker, health officials said, as tanks deepened their incursion in the area and blew up homes, according to residents.
Medics said at least 12 people were killed in an Israeli strike on a house in the area of Jabalia, in northern Gaza, earlier on Wednesday. They said at least 10 people remained missing as rescue operations continued. Another man was killed in tank shelling nearby, they said.
In the Sabra suburb of Gaza City, the Palestinian civil emergency said an Israeli air strike targeted one of their teams during a rescue operation, killing one staff and wounding three others.
The death raised the number of civil emergency service members killed since Oct 7, 2023, to 87, it said.
There was no immediate Israeli comment on the two incidents.
Adding to the challenges facing the health care system in north Gaza areas, the civil emergency service said their vehicles were hardly operational because of shortages of fuel and equipment, citing Israel’s continued refusal to allow them to bring the needed supplies.
In Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, medics said one man was killed and others wounded in an Israeli air strike on the eastern territory of the city.
Residents in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanoun, where the army has operated since early last month, said forces blew up dozens of houses in the three areas, adding to fears Israel was seeking to clear residents to create a buffer zone, something Israel denies.
Israel said it sent forces into the two towns and refugee camp to fight Hamas militants launching attacks and to prevent them from regrouping. It said it had killed hundreds of them since Oct 5.
Hamas and the Islamic Jihad armed wing claimed they killed many Israeli soldiers in anti-tank and mortar fire as well as ambushes by explosive devices during the same period.
Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of three medical facilities barely operational in the north of the enclave, said the hospital came under Israeli fire on Tuesday.
“The health care system is still operating under extremely harsh conditions. Following the arrest of 45 members of the medical and surgical staff and the denial of entry to a replacement team, we are now losing wounded patients daily who could have survived if resources were available,” said Abu Safiya.
“Unfortunately, food and water are not allowed to enter, and not even a single ambulance is permitted access to the north. Yesterday, the hospital was bombed across all its departments without warning, as we were trying to save an injured person in the intensive care unit,” he added.
Speaking during a visit to Gaza on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Hamas would not rule the Palestinian enclave after the war had ended and that Israel had destroyed the Islamist group’s military capabilities.
Netanyahu also said Israel had not given up trying to locate the 101 remaining hostages believed to be still in the enclave and he offered a $5 million reward for the return of each one.
Qatar, a key ceasefire mediator alongside Egypt, said it informed Hamas and Israel it will stall its mediation efforts unless the two warring parties showed “willingness and seriousness” to reach a deal.
Hamas wants a deal that ends the war, while Netanyahu vowed the war can only end once Hamas is eradicated.
The 2023 attack on Israel, which shattered Israel’s aura of invincibility, marked the country’s bloodiest day in its history, with 1,200 people killed and over 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel responded with its most destructive offensive in Gaza, killing nearly 44,000 people and wounding 103,898, according to the Gaza health ministry, and turning the enclave into a wasteland of rubble with millions desperate for food, fuel, water and sanitation.

VIENNA: Iran has tried in vain to prevent a Western push for a resolution against it at the UN nuclear watchdog’s board meeting by offering to cap its stock of uranium just shy of weapons grade, the watchdog and diplomats said on Tuesday.
One of two confidential International Atomic Energy Agency reports to member states, both seen by Reuters, said Iran had offered not to expand its stock of uranium enriched to up to 60 percent purity, near the roughly 90 percent of weapons grade, and had made preparations to do that.
The offer is conditional, however, on Western powers abandoning their push for a resolution against Iran at this week’s quarterly meeting of the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors over its lack of cooperation with the IAEA, diplomats said, adding that the push was continuing regardless.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told his French counterpart Jean-Noel Barrot that the push from France, Germany and Britain to submit a resolution against Tehran would “complicate matters” and contradict the “positive atmosphere created between Iran and the IAEA,” the Iranian foreign ministry said on Wednesday.
During IAEA chief Rafael Grossi’s trip to Iran last week, “the possibility of Iran not further expanding its stockpile of uranium enriched up to 60 percent U-235 was discussed,” read one of the two quarterly IAEA reports.
It added that the IAEA had verified Iran had “begun implementation of preparatory measures.” A senior diplomat added that the pace of enrichment to that level had slowed, a step necessary before stopping.
Western diplomats dismissed Iran’s overture as yet another last-minute attempt to avoid censure at a board meeting, much like a vague pledge of deeper cooperation with the IAEA in March of last year that was never fully implemented.
“Stopping enriching to 60 percent, great, they shouldn’t be doing that in the first place as we all know there’s no credible civilian use for the 60 percent,” one Western diplomat said, adding: “It’s something they could switch back on again easily.”
Iran’s offer was to cap the stock of uranium enriched to up to 60 percent at around 185 kg, or the amount it had two days ago, a senior diplomat said. That is enough in principle, if enriched further, for four nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick. Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons.
The report said Iran’s stock of uranium enriched to up to 60 percent had grown by 17.6 kg in the past quarter to 182.3 kg as of Oct. 26, also enough for four weapons by that measure.

Inspectors
The second report said Iran had also agreed to consider allowing four more “experienced inspectors” to work in Iran after it barred most of the IAEA’s inspectors who are experts in enrichment last year in what the IAEA called a “very serious blow” to its ability to do its job properly in Iran.
Diplomats said they could not be the same inspectors that were barred.
The reports were delayed by Grossi’s trip, during which he hoped to persuade Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian to end a standoff with the IAEA over long-running issues like unexplained uranium traces at undeclared sites and extending IAEA oversight to more areas.
The draft resolution backed by Britain, France, Germany and the United States condemning Iran for its poor cooperation with the IAEA would also task the IAEA with issuing a “comprehensive report” on Iran’s nuclear activities, diplomats said.
There is little doubt the board will pass the resolution, due to be formally submitted on Tuesday evening for a vote later this week. The last resolution against Iran was in June. Only Russia and China opposed it.
The aim is to pressure Iran to return to the negotiating table to agree fresh restrictions on its nuclear activities since a 2015 deal with far-ranging curbs fell apart. Although most of its terms have been broken, the deal’s “termination day” formally lifting them is in October of next year.
It is the last quarterly board meeting before US President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
Trump pulled the United States out of the nuclear deal in 2018, which prompted its unraveling. It is far from clear if he would back talks with Iran, having pledged instead to again take a more confrontational approach and align Washington even more closely with Iran’s arch-foe Israel, which opposed the deal.