Israeli strikes kill dozens in Gaza, Lebanon as ceasefire remains elusive | News on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

The Israeli military has killed dozens more people in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon as it escalates its attacks as ceasefire talks appear to be going nowhere.

At least 55 people were killed across the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, according to the enclave's health ministry. Fourteen of them were killed on Friday in a series of Israeli air strikes and shelling of warships in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, medical officials at al-Awda Hospital said.

“People are coming to the hospital in carts pulled by animals because it is quite difficult for frontline civil defense and rescue workers to reach the area as Israeli military drones are actively operating there,” reported Tareq Abu Azzoum from Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah as the bombs fell a few kilometers away.

One of the targets in Nuseirat was a school that was converted into a shelter for displaced Palestinians, bringing the total number of centers affected since the start of the war to nearly 200.

Abu Mohammed al-Taweel, a witness to the Israeli attacks on Nuseirat, said he saw many people killed after several family homes were attacked, including a five-month-old baby.

“The Israelis are bent on killing Palestinian children and women. There are no resistance fighters in the camp. They attacked us without warning,” he told Al Jazeera.

“We are here to die. We are ready to die. I wasn't killed today, but I will definitely be killed tomorrow. There are no safe places here in the Gaza Strip. Massacres are being committed everywhere.”

The Israeli attack on the enclave also continued in other parts. Dozens more people were reportedly killed in deadly attacks in Khan Younis in the south and Gaza City in the north.

The situation remains dire in the northern Gaza Strip, where the Israeli military continues the siege, blocking humanitarian aid and trying to force Palestinians to flee the area.

“The situation unfolding in northern Gaza is apocalyptic,” the heads of major UN agencies said on Friday. “The entire Palestinian population in northern Gaza is in imminent danger of death from disease, starvation and violence,” said the joint statement from the heads of the organizations that make up the United Nations Interagency Standing Committee.

On Thursday, Israeli forces attacked several areas of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north, including the medicine stockpile delivered by the World Health Organization five days earlier and a water desalination plant.

According to Gaza's Health Ministry, at least two children died in intensive care after the hospital's generators failed and the oxygen station was attacked.

The state media office in Gaza reported on Friday that the number of journalists killed by Israelis since the start of the war had risen to 183.

The official death toll in Gaza currently stands at 43,259 people and 101,827 injured, but the actual number of victims is likely to be much higher.

“War crimes” attacks in Baalbek, Lebanon

The Israeli military is also steadily expanding its attack on Lebanon.

At least 41 people were killed in Israeli attacks on the Baalbek region in eastern Lebanon on Friday, the regional governor said. At least 2,897 people have been killed and 13,150 injured in Lebanon by Israeli attacks since October last year.

On Friday morning, several evacuation orders were issued for residents of several neighborhoods in the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut. A series of massive strikes broke out, leaving destroyed buildings and Lebanese struggling to clear roads so ambulances could reach the injured.

But emergency services and civil defense personnel are also regularly targeted. At least six medics were killed in multiple Israeli strikes within three hours on Thursday, bringing the total number of medics killed since the aggression began to 178, with 279 injured and 246 vehicles hit.

This week, the Israeli army issued forced evacuation orders – effectively equivalent to killing zones – for dozens of villages and towns in southern Lebanon, as well as the major ancient cities of Baalbek and Tire.

In one of the latest Israeli raids near the Imam Hussein mosque in the Raml district of Tire on Friday, two buildings were leveled, with medics struggling to pull bodies out from under the rubble.

“Ancient Phoenician cities steeped in history are in grave danger of being left in ruins,” Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, United Nations special coordinator for Lebanon, said of the threat posed to Tire and Baalbek by Israeli attacks.

Lebanese interim Prime Minister Najib Mikati has called the attacks on those cities and Israeli evacuation orders, along with other killings and destruction, “war crimes” as he maintains contact with his U.S. and regional counterparts to reach a ceasefire.

Although U.S. and Lebanese officials initially expressed hope this week that a ceasefire could be reached in Lebanon, there were no signs of a breakthrough after Washington's envoys returned home following talks in Israel.

Mikati said the increasing attacks “confirm the Israeli enemy's rejection of all efforts for a ceasefire.”

Israel has called for Hezbollah's withdrawal from Lebanon's southern borders and its disarmament or reserve the right to carry out attacks in Lebanon.