Israeli forces bomb Gaza, fight Hamas around many hospitals

7 Lebanese, an Israeli killed in fire exchange along Lebanon-israel border

Gaza Strip,

March 27: Israeli forces pounded besieged Gaza on Wednesday in the war sparked by the October 7 attack and fought Hamas around several hospitals despite a UN Security Council demand for a ceasefire.

An Israeli airstrike on a paramedics centre linked to a Lebanese Sunni Muslim group in south Lebanon killed seven of its members early on Wednesday and triggered a rocket attack from Lebanon that killed one person in northern Israel, officials said. The strike on the village of Hebbariye came after a day of airstrikes and rocket attacks between Israel’s military and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group along the Lebanonisrael border, raising concerns of further escalation along the frontier that has been active for the past five months of the Israel-hamas war.

Talks in Qatar towards a truce and hostage release deal, involving US and Egyptian mediators, have brought no result so far, with Israel and the Palestinian militant group blaming each other.

Tensions have risen between Israel and its top ally the United States over the soaring civilian death toll and dire food shortages in Gaza, and Israeli plans to push its ground offensive into the farsouthern city of Rafah, which is packed with displaced

civilians.

In heavy overnight bombardment, Israeli strikes again hit Gaza City and Rafah, where a fireball lit up the sky over the city crowded with up to 1.5 million people, most of them displaced by the war.

The health ministry in

Hamas-run Gaza said 66 people were killed in overnight bombardment and combat. Israeli forces have battled militants in and around three Gaza hospitals, raising fears for patients, medical staff and displaced people inside them.