Rocket sirens sounded Thursday in central and southern Israel, while Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip said an Israeli airstrike killed four people in southern Gaza.
Hamas said those killed included Bassam Ghaben, the Hamas-appointed senior border official on the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom crossing.
The Reuters news agency quoted an Israeli military spokesperson saying Israel was not familiar with the incident.
Israel opened the Kerem Shalom crossing last week, allowing aid to cross from inspection sites there directly into Gaza instead of having to go to the Rafah border crossing linking Gaza and Egypt.
The Israel Defense Forces posted maps showing rocket alarms stretching from Ashkelon, just north of the Gaza Strip, up to the Tel Aviv area.
Palestinian militants have fired barrages of rockets at Israeli territory throughout the conflict.
Israel’s military also said Thursday its forces had carried out attacks against 230 targets in the Gaza Strip during the past day.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, said a shutdown of telecommunications services in Gaza made it difficult to report on the situation there, and that aid agencies and first responders “have warned that telecommunications blackouts jeopardize the already constrained provision of life-saving assistance.”
OCHA also continued to highlight the arrival of civilians to areas in southern Gaza where shelters are already over capacity, leaving hundreds of thousands of displaced people “squeezed into extremely overcrowded spaces and in dire living conditions.”
In New York, the U.N. Security Council planned to again try to vote on a resolution calling for a pause in fighting to facilitate an increased flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
The scheduled vote Thursday follows postponements throughout this week as diplomats work on compromise language to overcome objections that could prevent the measure from being adopted.
On December 8, the United States used its veto power as one of the five permanent members of the council to halt a previous resolution calling for a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, which governs Gaza, after its fighters crossed into southern Israel on October 7. Israel said 1,200 people were killed and some 240 captives taken in the terror attack. More than 100 of the hostages remain in Gaza.
The Israeli response has killed nearly 20,000 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Israel says 134 of its soldiers have died in its ground offensive.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
