Palestine

QUSRA, West Bank (AP) — When Israeli warplanes swooped over the Gaza Strip following Hamas militants’ deadly attack on southern Israel, Palestinians say a different kind of war took hold in the occupied West Bank.

Overnight, the territory was closed off. Towns were raided, curfews imposed, teenagers arrested, detainees beaten, and villages stormed by Jewish vigilantes.

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces pressed their offensive against Hamas in northern Gaza on Monday, battling militants around a hospital where thousands of patients and displaced people have been sheltering for weeks, raising Palestinian fears of another painful standoff and evacuation of a medical facility.

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Heavy fighting erupted Monday around a hospital in northern Gaza where thousands of patients and displaced people have been sheltering for weeks, as Israeli forces focus on clearing medical facilities that they say Hamas militants use for cover.

A shell struck the second floor of the Indonesian Hospital, killing at least 12 people, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza and a medical worker inside the facility. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

GAZA Nov 19 (Reuters) - The head of a prominent media institution in Gaza and two other journalists were killed during the weekend in Israel's offensive in the territory, their relatives said on Sunday, adding to the dozens of reporters who have died in the six-week conflict.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said the weekend deaths raised to 48 the number of journalists and media workers it had confirmed killed in the region since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent Israeli offensive.

GAZA, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- A Palestinian source said on Sunday that Qatar presented Israel with "two suggestions" on the hostage deal with Hamas.

The source, who requires anonymity, told Xinhua that the first suggestion is for Hamas to release 53 children and women in exchange for a three-day ceasefire and the entry of a certain amount of fuel into the Gaza Strip.

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Health officials said Sunday that 31 “very sick” premature babies were safely transferred from Gaza’s main hospital to another in the south and will later go to Egypt, as scores of critically wounded patients remained stranded there days after Israeli forces entered the compound.

GAZA, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- The Israeli army has demanded the evacuation of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City within one hour, Palestine TV reported on Saturday morning.

Sources in the hospital told Xinhua there is a severe state of panic and fear now in the hospital.

"We will not leave the hospital unless we do so with the patients," the sources cited medical personnel in the hospital.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The United Nations was forced Friday to stop deliveries of food and other necessities to Gaza and warned of the growing risk of widespread starvation after internet and telephone services collapsed in the besieged enclave because of lack of fuel.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The wreckage goes on for block after devastated block. The smell is sickening. Every day, hundreds of people claw through tons of rubble with shovels and iron bars and their bare hands.

They are looking for the bodies of their children. Their parents. Their neighbors. All of them killed in Israeli missile strikes. The corpses are there, somewhere in the endless acres of destruction.

Tehran, IRNA - In the latest Israeli attempt to justify their crimes, Israeli soldiers claimed they found Hamas' military equipment during a raid in Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, but no evidence yet of a vast tunnel network it claimed was used by Hamas, media reports said.