Deadly Israeli airstrike hits central Gaza

Palestinian medics said an Israeli airstrike Monday hit the area of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, killing at least three people and injuring 40 others.

The health ministry in Gaza said the strike caused a large fire in hospital facilities and among tents at the site used by Palestinians displaced by the war.

Israel’s military said it was targeting militants hiding among civilians.

The attack came hours after another Israeli strike killed at least 15 people at a school in Nuseirat that was being used by displaced Palestinians.

“Another night of horror in the Gaza Strip,” The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said Monday. The agency said the school was set to be used for giving polio vaccines Monday.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell expressed “grave concern” Monday about attacks by Israeli forces that injured several U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon.

“Such attacks against U.N. peacekeepers constitute a grave violation of international law and are totally unacceptable. These attacks must stop immediately,” Borrell told reporters.

U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) peacekeepers at a U.N. position in Ramyah said Sunday they observed three platoons of Israeli soldiers cross into Lebanon. With peacekeepers in their shelters, the U.N. mission said two Israeli tanks destroyed the position’s main gate and forcibly entered the position.

It was the latest in a series of incidents that injured at least five peacekeepers since Thursday.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin raised the issue with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in a phone call Sunday. The Pentagon said Austin “reinforced the importance of Israel taking all necessary measures to ensure the safety and security of UNIFIL forces and Lebanese Armed Forces.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the United Nations on Sunday to move its peacekeepers out of “harm’s way” in southern Lebanon, claiming that Hezbollah militants were using them as “human shields” in the ongoing fighting with Israel.

UNIFIL, a mission of about 9,500 troops of various nationalities, was created following Israel's 1978 invasion of Lebanon. It is currently tasked with monitoring a cease-fire that ended a 33-day war in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah.

The Israeli military said a drone attack Sunday by the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group killed four Israeli soldiers and injured seven others.

Austin expressed his condolences for that attack in his phone call with Gallant, the Pentagon said.

Austin also “raised concern for the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and stressed that steps must be taken soon to address it,” Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement.

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Sunday the agency reached two hospitals in northern Gaza to deliver aid needed to keep the hospitals functioning.

Tedros said the deliveries were made “amid ongoing hostilities” and that WHO and Palestine Red Crescent Society drivers “were subjected to humiliating security screening and temporary detention at a checkpoint — which is unacceptable.”

The United States announced Sunday it is sending an advanced missile defense system to Israel and about 100 American troops to operate it.

The Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, is a ground-based interceptor designed to defend against ballistic missiles. Its deployment comes after Iran launched more than 180 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1 after an Israeli attack on Beirut killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, with Israel now planning a retaliatory attack on Tehran.

The THAAD system is used to shoot down ballistic missiles. It does not have any warheads and is not used to conduct offensive attacks.

When asked about the decision Sunday, Biden said only that he had ordered the Pentagon to deploy the system “to defend Israel.” He declined to answer follow-up questions.

The U.S. is already Israel’s biggest arms supplier and Ryder said in his statement that the battery would “augment Israel’s integrated air defense system.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on X that Iran has “no red lines in defending our people and interests.”

His comments appeared intended to dispel suggestions that Iran would absorb an Israeli strike without a further response, as Tehran did earlier this year when Israel last struck Iran after a volley of Iranian missiles.

The current conflict in the Middle East began when Hamas militants attacked Israel in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and capturing about 250 hostages. Israel says it believes Hamas is still holding 101 hostages, including 35 the military says are dead.

Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza has killed more than 42,200 Palestinians, according to the territory's health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.

The war has displaced about 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, many of the multiple times as they fled the fighting and repeated Israeli evacuation orders.

Hamas has been designated a terror group by the United States, the U.K. and other Western countries.

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.