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GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories — Authorities in Gaza said dozens of Palestinians were killed on Tuesday in three separate strikes, as Israel pounded the territory despite renewed US criticism of the high civilian toll.

Gaza civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the three air strikes killed at least 44 people and wounded dozens within an hour across the war-ravaged Palestinian territory. Israel said it carried out two of the strikes.

The health ministry said a strike on a fuel station in Al Mawasi in southern Gaza killed 17 people, and the Palestinian Red Crescent said a separate strike at almost the same time on the UN-run Al Razi School in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza killed five people.

The civil defence agency said the third strike was on a gathering of people near a roundabout in northern Gaza. It did not give a precise toll breakdown.

Hours earlier, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told two senior Israeli officials of Washington's "serious concern" following deadly Israeli strikes in Gaza, his spokesman said.

“We have seen civilian casualties come down from the high points of the conflict... but they still remain unacceptably high,” spokesman Matthew Miller said after Blinken met Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi.

Washington has been pushing for a truce between Israel and Hamas.

But Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh said Sunday the group was pulling out of indirect talks for a deal in protest at Israeli “massacres”, including a massive strike on Sunday that Gaza’s health ministry said killed at least 92 people.

Hamas was ready to return to the indirect talks once Israel “demonstrates seriousness in reaching a ceasefire agreement and a prisoner exchange deal”, he said.

On Tuesday, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to ramp up pressure on Hamas.

“This is exactly the time to increase the pressure even more, to bring home all the hostages — the living and the dead — and to achieve all the war objectives,” he said. 

The Israeli military said its aircraft struck about “40 terror targets” in Gaza, including “sniping posts, observation posts, Hamas military structures, terror infrastructure, and buildings rigged with explosives”.

It said troops were continuing targeted raids in the southern city of Rafah and in central Gaza.

Palestinian Red Crescent medics said they recovered four bodies from a house outside the southern city of Khan Yunis and another from Nuseirat camp.

Israeli offensive has killed at least 38,713 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Gaza health ministry.

Israel’s military has also detained scores of Gazans, who have made allegations of torture, rape and other abuses in custody that Israeli authorities have denied.

Palestinian lawyer Khaled Mahajna said Monday that prisoners had recounted guards using “electric prods” on inmates’ bodies.

In one prisoner’s case, a “fire extinguisher tube was inserted into his buttocks and the fire extinguisher was turned on,” Mahajna said after visiting detained Palestinian journalists.

He said prisoners were handcuffed when they ate the meagre meals provided, while detainees reported widespread disease and untreated wounds.

Five Israeli human rights groups have gone to court over conditions at the Sde Teiman desert camp where Gazans are being held. Israeli officials insist they act within the bounds of international law.

Indirect talks on ending the devastating war have been brokered by Qatar and Egypt, with US support, but months of negotiations have failed to bring a breakthrough.

At the end of May, US President Joe Biden outlined a ceasefire roadmap he said had been drawn up by Israel that triggered an intensification of the talks.

But despite meetings in both Cairo and Doha, there has been no sign of progress on how this might be implemented.

Critics in Israel, including tens of thousands of demonstrators demanding a deal to bring home the hostages, have accused Netanyahu of prolonging the war.

The war has forced 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.4 million people to flee their homes. Many have sought refuge in UN-run schools, seven of which have been hit by Israeli strikes since July 6.

“Why do they target us when we are innocent people?” asked Umm Mohammed Al Hasanat, sheltering with her family at a UN-run school in Nuseirat, which was among those hit.

“We do not carry weapons but are just sitting and trying to find safety for ourselves and our children.”

GAZA/RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — The health ministry in the Gaza Strip said on Monday at least 38,664 people have been killed in the war between Israel and Palestinian fighters.

The toll includes 80 new deaths in 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 89,097 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas fighters attacked Israel on October 7.

The ministry also updated the toll from an Israeli air strike on a school in central Gaza on Sunday, saying it had increased from 15 dead to 22.

The Abu Araban school was run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, and housed "thousands of displaced people", civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP on Sunday.

It was the fifth Israeli strike on a school being used to shelter displaced Palestinians in eight days.

A Hamas official said Sunday that the Palestinian group was withdrawing from Gaza truce talks, as Israeli bombardments hit a school a day after a deadly strike targeting the fighter commander Mohammed Deif.

Speaking after the strike on southern Gaza's Al Mawasi, which the health ministry in the territory said killed at least 92 people, a senior official from Iran-backed Hamas cited Israeli "massacres" as a reason for suspending negotiations.

A second Hamas official said Deif, commander of the Islamist group's military wing, was "well and directly overseeing" operations despite the Israeli bombing raid that the military said was an attempt to kill him.

On Sunday, Israeli forces struck a UN-run school in the central Nuseirat refugee camp that the military said "served as a hideout" for militants.

The civil defence agency in Gaza said 15 people were killed in the strike, the fifth attack in just over a week to hit a school used as shelter by displaced Palestinians.

The first Hamas official, quoting the group’s Qatar-based political chief Ismail Haniyeh, said Israel’s “lack of seriousness, continued policy of procrastination and obstruction, and the ongoing massacres against unarmed civilians” were behind the “decision to halt negotiations”.

But according to the official, Haniyeh told international mediators Hamas was “ready to resume negotiations” when Israel’s government “demonstrates seriousness in reaching a ceasefire agreement and a prisoner exchange deal”.

Meanwhile, senior officials from the rival Palestinian groups Hamas, which is at war with Israel, and Fateh have agreed to meet in Beijing this month in a renewed bid for reconciliation, officials said on Monday.

The Hamas delegation is to be headed by Haniyeh, while the Fateh representation will be led by deputy head Mahmud Alul, Fateh sources said.

Hamas had no immediate comment.

The two groups have been bitter rivals since Hamas fighters ejected Fateh from the Gaza Strip after deadly clashes that followed Hamas’s resounding victory in a 2006 election.

After seizing control of Gaza in 2007, the Islamist Hamas movement has ruled the territory ever since.

The secularist Fateh movement controls the Palestinian Authority which has partial administrative control in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Several reconciliation bids have failed, but calls have grown since the Hamas October 7 surprise attacks on Israel set off the Gaza war, with violence also soaring in the West Bank where Fateh is based.

China hosted Fateh and Hamas in April but a meeting scheduled for June was postponed.

The representatives are to meet with Chinese officials in Beijing on July 20 and July 21, according to Fateh’s Central Committee Deputy Secretary-General Sabri Saidam.

Before that, a meeting of the two groups could take place, he added.

The goal, said Saidam, “is to end the state of division with a commitment to past agreements and agreeing on a relationship between the Palestinian groups in the next stage”.

Another Fateh executive member also said a joint Fateh-Hamas meeting could be held in Beijing before the official agenda starts.

DIWANIYAH, Iraq — Hundreds of Iraqis in the southern province of Diwaniyah protested on Monday against power cuts and water shortages during the extreme heat of summer, an AFP correspondent said.

Decades of war have left the country's infrastructure in a pitiful state, with power cuts worsening the blistering summer when temperatures often reach 50ºC mostly in southern provinces.

Dozens of villages in Diwaniyah have also suffered for years from water shortages because of a four-year-long drought and reduced river flows.

On Monday, around 500 angry protesters encircled the municipality building in Shafeiya village, burning tyres and chanting for better services.

"We don't have electricity. We used to get it for only two hours [per day], but now it is only one hour and 15 minutes," said protester Youssef Kamel.

"We don't have water or agriculture," he said, adding that "everyone has left to look for jobs" as labourers in the cities.

Last week, hundreds of people also protested outside electricity department offices in Ghamas district, blocking roads and burning tyres.

On Saturday, police used tear gas to disperse protesters, and dozens were briefly detained.

Iraq is the second-largest oil producer in the OPEC cartel, but despite having immense oil and gas reserves, it remains dependent on imports to meet its energy needs.

Neighbouring Iran supplies about a third of its power sector requirements.

Many households have just a few hours of mains electricity per day, and those who can afford it use private generators to keep fridges and air conditioners running.

Anger over corruption, unemployment and blackouts helped to fuel deadly protests from late 2019 to mid-2020.

The protests morphed into an unprecedented anti-government movement, mostly across southern Iraq and in Baghdad, before a security crackdown killed more than 600 people.

DAMASCUS — A Syrian soldier was killed early on Sunday and three others injured in Israeli strikes on several positions in and around Damascus, Syrian state media said.

The Israeli army, meanwhile, said it had targeted a Syrian military command centre as well as targets and infrastructure belonging to the Syrian army and air defence in response to two drones launched towards Israel from Syrian territory.

The statement was a rare acknowledgement by the Israeli military of action in Syria, where it has launched hundreds of strikes since the country's civil war erupted in 2011, which have mainly targeted army positions and Iran-backed fighters.

"A soldier was killed and three others injured following an aerial aggression launched by the Israeli enemy after midnight" on Sunday, Syria's state news agency SANA reported.

The strike "was launched from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights targeting several military positions in the southern region and a residential building in the Kafr Sousa district of Damascus", it added.

It said that aerial defence systems had intercepted and downed a number of missiles "despite their intensity".

The news agency published a photo showing a fire in what appeared to be a crater caused by the blast.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights meanwhile said a Syrian pro-government fighter had been killed and six others injured in Israeli strikes targeting a building in Kafr Sousa and a military headquarters south of Damascus.

The building in Kafr Sousa, which hosted fighters from the so-called “axis of resistance” — Iran-backed armed factions opposed to the US and Israel — was destroyed, according to the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources in Syria.

Local radio station Sham FM had reported “the explosion of a munitions depot following an Israeli attack that targeted a position near the capital”.

“The blasts were very strong and came in succession,” a resident of the eastern Damascus neighbourhood of Mezzeh told AFP, adding that this was followed by “the strong odour of gunpowder”.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Lebanon's Hizbollah launched rockets at Israel on Saturday after an Israeli air strike that according to a Lebanese security source killed two civilians in the country's south.

The Israeli military, whose forces have been trading regular cross-border fire with Hizbollah since early October, said its raid had targeted two operatives from the Iran-backed group.

The Shiite Muslim movement said it had retaliated by launching dozens of rockets at the border town of Kiryat Shmona, in Israel's north.

The Israeli military said four soldiers were wounded including one "severely", after air defences intercepted most of the "approximately 15 launches... identified crossing from Lebanon".

Israeli aircraft then "struck a Hizbollah field commander who was operating in the area of [Kfar] Tebnit in southern Lebanon", the military added.

Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA) reported multiple wounded in an Israeli drone strike on a vehicle near Kfar Tebnit.

Hizbollah had already launched multiple attacks against Israeli military positions along the border on Saturday.

The Lebanese security source, requesting anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media, said that "two civilians were filling up water from a roadside spring" in south Lebanon's Deir Mimas area when they were killed in an "Israeli air strike".

A source close to Hizbollah, also requesting anonymity, said one of the men was a member of the group and the father of a fighter who had been killed, while the second man was a member of Hizbollah ally the Amal movement.

The pair were “civilians, not fighters”, the source added.

Hizbollah said it had launched rockets “in response to the aggressions by the Israeli enemy against the villages... and civilians in the south”.

Hizbollah has traded almost daily fire with Israeli forces in support of ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 surprise attack on Israel triggered war in the Gaza Strip.

The NNA said an “enemy drone” killed two men on Saturday in the same area, identifying one of them as a local council member for the Amal movement in the nearby village of Kfar Kila.

It said they were collecting water from the spring “to take it for livestock in Kfar Kila”.

The Amal movement released a statement saying one of its members, born in 1964, was killed.

In Lebanon, the cross-border violence since October has killed more than 500 people, mostly fighters but also including more than 90 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, at least 29 people have been killed, the majority of them soldiers, according to the authorities.

The violence, largely restricted to the border area, has raised fears of all-out conflict between the foes, which last went to war in the summer of 2006.

AL MAWASI, Palestinian Territories — Israel had declared Al Mawasi a safe zone as it pushed into Rafah near the Egyptian border, but on Saturday Palestinians raced to collect the dozens of casualties from the army's latest strike.

Sirens wailed and women screamed as children were pulled out of the wreckage and rushed to nearby hospitals following the strike on a displacement camp.

"What did we do? What did we do? We were only sitting near the beach," one woman from the coastal town cried. 

The territory's health ministry said more than 71 people were killed and 289 people wounded in what it called a "massacre" at Al Mawasi camp.

AFP could not independently confirm the toll.

The Israeli military claimed the attack targeted Hamas military strategist Mohammed Deif and Rafa Salama, a brigade commander, describing the pair as two of the masterminds of the October 7 surprise attack, which set off the war in Gaza.

The camp, near the city of Khan Yunis, was designated a humanitarian area after Israel in May ordered civilians to evacuate other parts of the Gaza Strip. 

Hundreds of thousands of displaced people were sheltering there, according to UK-based Medical Aid for Palestinians, which operates health sites in the area.

“We have been warning for months that there is no safe place for anyone in Gaza amid Israel’s military bombardment,” the charity said in a statement.

Black smoke billowed behind a wide, ash-strewn street in Al Mawasi where bodies lay in pools of blood, some covered by sheets.

Men struggling to carry the wounded wove through those beyond help to get to ambulances waiting with doors open. Others were piled onto donkey-pulled carts. 

Despite the Nasser Hospital reporting it was at full-capacity, ambulances kept arriving with wounded on orange stretchers, including a man with a towel tied to his leg as a makeshift tourniquet. 

A woman outside the hospital could be head pleading: “Please enough, enough for God sake”.

The Israeli military said Saturday’s offensive “struck an open area” that “was not a tent complex but an operational compound”.

“According to our information, only Hamas terrorists were present and there were no civilians,” it said.

Hamas called the claim that Deif had been targeted “false allegations” intended “to cover up the magnitude of the horrific massacre”.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said heavy shelling was preventing its teams from reaching the “many bodies” scattered in the streets.

Mahmud Abu Akar described missiles raining down seemingly endlessly.

“Every time people tried to get close to rescue others, they would strike,” he said. 

“There was no warning at all, it happened all of a sudden.”

There have been previous reports of the camp coming under fire, including in June when the International Committee of the Red Cross said 22 people were killed by shelling that damaged its office.

Israel’s offensive has killed at least 38,443 people in Gaza, according to data from Gaza’s health ministry.

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — Fighting and bombardment shook Gaza's biggest city on Thursday, an AFP correspondent said, even after Israel's military declared an end to its operation in an eastern district that saw Gaza City's heaviest combat in months.

The upsurge in fighting, bombardment and displacement followed Israeli embattled prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's statement in late June that "the war in its intense phase is about to end".

Gaza's authorities said troops had pulled back from Gaza City's eastern district of Shujaiya, leaving "more than 300 residential units and more than 100 businesses destroyed",

Witnesses said tanks and troops had moved into other Gaza City districts. An AFP correspondent reported air strikes on the Sabra neighbourhood while fighters engaged in heavy clashes with Israeli forces in Tel Al Hawa.

Officials in Gaza reported 45 air strikes in the Gaza City area, as well as in Gaza's southernmost city of Rafah.

Hamas's October 7 surprise attack on southern Israel that sparked the war. Israel responded with a military offensive that has killed at least 38,345 people in Gaza, according to figures from Gaza's health ministry.

The latest toll included 50 new deaths over the previous 24 hours, it said.

The United Nations said the latest evacuations “will only fuel mass suffering for Palestinian families, many of whom have been displaced many times”, and who face “critical levels of need”.

Palestinian official Hossam Badran told AFP that Israel was “hoping that the resistance will relinquish its legitimate demands” in truce negotiations.

But “the continuation of massacres compels us to adhere to our demands”, he said.

Standing nearby, Mohammed Nairi said he and other residents returned to “immense destruction that defies description. All the houses were demolished”.

Another displaced resident, a can of food tucked under her arm, said the district “lies in ruins”.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said around 60 bodies had been found in the ruins of Shujaiya.

“Once the Israeli occupation forces withdrew from the Shujaiya neighbourhood, civil defence crews, with local residents, managed to recover about 60 martyrs up to now,” agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.

WASHINGTON — The United States on Thursday imposed new sanctions against Israeli extremists over violence against Palestinians, including financial restrictions on four settlement outposts in the West Bank.

The State Department also blacklisted Lehava, which it described as the "largest violent extremist organisation in Israel" with more than 10,000 members.

"We strongly encourage the government of Israel to take immediate steps to hold these individuals and entities accountable. In the absence of such steps, we will continue to impose our own accountability measures," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

Settlement expansion has increased sharply since prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in late 2022 at the helm of a hardline pro-settler coalition.

The United States, while supporting Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, has repeatedly warned Netanyahu about inflaming tensions in the West Bank, home of the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority.

Israel distinguishes between wildcat outposts, built without the government's permission and state-approved settlements.

"Outposts like these have been used to disrupt grazing lands, limit access to wells and launch violent attacks against neighbouring Palestinians," Miller said in a statement.

The Israeli government recently approved three wildcat outposts, in what the Peace Now watchdog called a new step toward "annexation" of the West Bank.

Lehava swiftly criticized the US designation and President Joe Biden, saying the group will not stop its actions.

“Biden’s measures won’t deter us — we’ll continue to act fearlessly to save Israel’s daughters, much to the dismay of Biden and Israel’s other enemies.”

PORT SUDAN, Sudan  — Large parts of war-torn Sudan are inaccessible to aid workers, a Red Cross official said on Wednesday as devastating fighting between the army and paramilitaries rages on.

“There are plenty of areas we cannot access, sometimes because they are very dangerous, and sometimes we do not receive permission,” said Pierre Dorbes, a representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

“Improving access will help millions of people,” Dorbes told journalists in Port Sudan, the Red Sea city where the army, government and UN agencies are now based.

War has raged since April 2023 between the regular army under Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

The conflict has left tens of thousands dead and displaced more than 10 million people, according to the United Nations.

A recent UN-backed report said nearly 26 million people, or slightly more than half of the population, were facing high levels of “acute food insecurity”.

Volunteer groups in some areas consumed by the violence have set up communal kitchens, supported by international organisations.

“We provide about 2,000 meals a day, and this number is increasing daily,” Esmat Mohamed, who supervises one such initiative in the capital Khartoum, told AFP.

But international groups face logistical hurdles in transferring funds to volunteers on the ground, said one employee requesting anonymity for security reasons.

In the town of Dilling, near the South Sudan border, Kinda Komi is one of the volunteers providing meals to those in need.

“Since the start of the war, no food aid has reached the town, and the roads connecting it to the rest of the country have been cut due to the clashes,” she said.

According to her, “half of those in need leave without receiving meals.”