Dozens reported killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza as fighting intensifies in Lebanon

As many as 30 people have been killed in a series of strikes in northern Gaza overnight, local officials said, as international condemnation grows over Israel’s offensive in neighboring Lebanon.

According to Gaza’s Hamas-run civil defense agency, attacks on the town of Jabalia left 12 dead, while an earlier barrage that hit several schools and a nearby refugee camp killed 18, with over a hundred injured and others trapped under rubble. Photos from the scene show large numbers of children among the casualties.

The Israeli Defense Forces did not immediately respond to a request from POLITICO to comment on the incidents, but has publicly claimed to have killed dozens of Hamas fighters in the strikes, without presenting evidence.

The rising death toll comes as the World Food Program warns that no food trucks have been allowed by Israeli authorities to enter Gaza since the start of October and that as many as a million people are at risk of famine. A U.N. report on Saturday also accused Israel of attacks on medical facilities in Gaza that “constitute the war crimes of willful killing and mistreatment and the crime against humanity of extermination.”

Reports on the ground have been hampered by limited access for reporters and the killings of as many as 128 media workers, according to the Committee to Protect Journalist. Reporters Without Borders accuses Israel of deliberately targeting the press and staging a “media blackout.”

At the same time, Hezbollah militants in nearby Lebanon claimed on Saturday morning to have launched a salvo of missiles at an Israeli military facility in the south of the country, as well as shelling soldiers stationed close to the shared border. Israeli authorities also say two drones crossed over from Lebanon with one striking a building in a suburb of Tel Aviv — no casualties were reported.

Israel is coming under increasing pressure over its incursion into Lebanon — which it says is aimed at wiping out Hezbollah, but has already displaced close to a million people, according to U.N. observers.

France and Italy on Friday summoned Israel’s ambassadors after U.N. peacekeepers were “deliberately” targeted in an attack that left four people injured and was branded by Paris as a “serious violation of international law.”

On Saturday, Nicaragua announced it would break off diplomatic ties with Israel over the escalating conflict, joining a growing list of countries, including Turkey, Brazil and South Africa, which have withdrawn their ambassadors since the Gaza offensive began just over a year ago.

The Israeli military campaign followed the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas that saw more than 1,200 Israelis killed.