Displaced individuals rely on animal-drawn carts for transportation in Al Zawayda, located in the central Gaza Strip, on November 20, 2024. — AFP

The civil defence agency in Gaza reported on Wednesday that at least 17 people, including a baby, were killed in Israeli air strikes on the war-torn Palestinian territory. The Israeli military confirmed the death of one of its soldiers and the serious injury of another during combat in the northern Gaza Strip. The baby was killed in nighttime shelling at the Nuseirat refugee camp, according to civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal, who also mentioned that two other people were killed by a shell west of the camp in central Gaza. A drone strike resulted in the death of two individuals, including a 15-year-old girl, at a school-turned-shelter for displaced people in Beit Lahia, a city in the north.

Since early October, the Israeli army has been conducting an operation in the far north of Gaza, aimed at preventing the regrouping of the Palestinian militant group Hamas. This military campaign has compelled at least 100,000 people to seek refuge in Gaza City and nearby areas, according to Louise Wateridge, spokeswoman for the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA. In Jabalia, also in Gaza's far north, emergency workers recovered the bodies of seven people from under the rubble of a house hit by an air strike the previous night, Bassal stated. In southern Gaza, a person was killed when a group of Palestinians was targeted near another school in Rafah on Wednesday.

Strikes on a residential building in Gaza City resulted in the deaths of two people, according to Bassal, while a first responder from the agency was killed while attempting to evacuate wounded individuals in the same area. In the city's Zeitun neighbourhood, an air strike killed one person and injured several others, Bassal added. The conflict in Gaza erupted following Hamas's unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which led to 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures. Israel's retaliatory military campaign has claimed nearly 44,000 lives in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which the UN deems reliable.

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