Dozens Killed and Wounded in Israeli Strikes Across Gaza

People transport bodies of victims on a donkey-pulled kart, following an overnight Israeli strike in Beit Lahya in the northern Gaza Strip on November 17, 2024. (Photo by AFP)
People transport bodies of victims on a donkey-pulled kart, following an overnight Israeli strike in Beit Lahya in the northern Gaza Strip on November 17, 2024. (Photo by AFP)
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Dozens Killed and Wounded in Israeli Strikes Across Gaza

People transport bodies of victims on a donkey-pulled kart, following an overnight Israeli strike in Beit Lahya in the northern Gaza Strip on November 17, 2024. (Photo by AFP)
People transport bodies of victims on a donkey-pulled kart, following an overnight Israeli strike in Beit Lahya in the northern Gaza Strip on November 17, 2024. (Photo by AFP)

Dozens of Palestinians were killed or injured in an Israeli strike on a multi-story residential building in northern Gaza's Beit Lahiya on Sunday, medics told Reuters.

There was no immediate figure for how many people were killed. The Palestinian Civil Emergency said around 70 people have lived in the property.

The Hamas-run Gaza government media office put the number of those killed at 72, saying the strike hit a residential building that housed members of six families.

There was no immediate comment from Israel.

The Israeli army sent tanks into Beit Lahiya and the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia, the largest of the Gaza Strip's eight historic refugee camps, last month in what it said was a campaign to fight Hamas militants waging attacks and prevent them from regrouping.

It said it has killed hundreds of militants in those three areas, which residents said Israeli forces had isolated from Gaza City.

Earlier on Sunday, an Israeli airstrike killed at least 10 people in the Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip, when a missile hit a house, medics said.

Four other people were killed in the nearby Nuseirat camp, they added.

The Gaza health ministry said 43,799 people have been confirmed dead since Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas militants killed around 1,200 Israelis that day, and still hold dozens of some 250 hostages they took back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.



Sudan Army Says Recaptures Key State Capital

Sudanese civilians displaced by offensive south of Khartoum earlier this year dream of returning to their homes after the regular army retakes territory - AFP
Sudanese civilians displaced by offensive south of Khartoum earlier this year dream of returning to their homes after the regular army retakes territory - AFP
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Sudan Army Says Recaptures Key State Capital

Sudanese civilians displaced by offensive south of Khartoum earlier this year dream of returning to their homes after the regular army retakes territory - AFP
Sudanese civilians displaced by offensive south of Khartoum earlier this year dream of returning to their homes after the regular army retakes territory - AFP

The Sudanese army said Saturday it had retaken a key state capital south of Khartoum from rival Rapid Support Forces who had held it for the past five months.

The Sennar state capital of Sinja is a strategic prize in the 19-month-old war between the regular army and the RSF as it lies on a key road linking army-controlled areas of eastern and central Sudan.

It posted footage on social media that it said had been filmed inside the main base in the city.

"Sinja has returned to the embrace of the nation," the information minister of the army-backed government, Khaled al-Aiser, said in a statement.

Aiser's office said armed forces chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan had travelled to the city of Sennar, 60 kilometres (40 miles) to the north, on Saturday to "inspect the operation and celebrate the liberation of Sinja", AFP reported.

The RSF had taken the two cities in a lightning offensive in June that saw nearly 726,000 civilians flee, according to UN figures.

Human rights groups have said that those who were unwilling or unable to leave have faced months of arbitrary violence by RSF fighters.

Sinja teacher Abdullah al-Hassan spoke of his "indescribable joy" at seeing the army enter the city after "months of terror".

"At any moment, you were waiting for militia fighters to barge in and beat you or loot you," the 53-year-old told AFP by telephone.

Both sides in the Sudanese conflict have been accused of war crimes, including indiscriminately shelling homes, markets and hospitals.

The RSF has also been accused of summary executions, systematic sexual violence and rampant looting.

The RSF control nearly all of the vast western region of Darfur as well as large swathes of Kordofan in the south. They also hold much of the capital Khartoum and the key farming state of Al-Jazira to its south.

Since April 2023, the war has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted more than 11 million -- creating what the UN says is the world's largest displacement crisis.

From the eastern state of Gedaref -- where more than 1.1 million displaced people have sought refuge -- Asia Khedr, 46, said she hoped her family's ordeal might soon be at an end.

"We'll finally go home and say goodbye to this life of displacement and suffering," she told AFP.