WRAPUP 5-Israel pounds targets across Gaza, awaits Hamas word on three hostages

Twelve Palestinians were killed and others wounded in an Israeli airstrike overnight on a house in Gaza City in the north, health officials said, while plumes of smoke rose above the main southern city of Khan Younis shelled by Israeli tanks. Hamas-affiliated Palestinian Press Agency SAFA reported fierce clashes between Hamas militants and Israeli forces in Khan Younis, while Israeli tank barrages were also reported near the Al-Bureij and Al-Maghazi refugee camps in central Gaza.

Israeli forces bombarded targets across Gaza on Monday ahead of an expected announcement by Hamas on the fate of three Israelis held hostage by the Palestinian militant group shown in a video clip at the weekend. Twelve Palestinians were killed and others wounded in an Israeli airstrike overnight on a house in Gaza City in the north, health officials said, while plumes of smoke rose above the main southern city of Khan Younis shelled by Israeli tanks.

Hamas-affiliated Palestinian Press Agency SAFA reported fierce clashes between Hamas militants and Israeli forces in Khan Younis, while Israeli tank barrages were also reported near the Al-Bureij and Al-Maghazi refugee camps in central Gaza. In Al-Nusseirat refugee camp, local journalist Doaa El-Baz showed footage of what had once been the street where she lived.

"This whole neighbourhood is destroyed. Not a single house has been spared," she said, standing before mounds of rubble. "They killed all our dreams here." In a statement, the Israeli military said it had killed two Palestinian fighters in an airstrike on their vehicle as it was transporting weapons in Khan Younis, and also raided a Hamas command centre in that city and struck two arms caches.

Separately, a Palestinian stole

a car and rammed people in the central Israeli town of Raanana on Monday, injuring at least 13, police said. The suspect - believed to be from Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank - was now in custody, they said. Israeli media said some people might have also been stabbed in the incident.

Communications across the narrow coastal Gaza Strip remained severed for a fourth consecutive day, residents said. The three Israeli hostages held in Gaza are among some 240 seized by Islamist Hamas militants during a surprise cross-border rampage into southern Israel on Oct. 7.

That Hamas assault, in which Israel says more than 1,200 people were killed, prompted an aerial and ground blitz by Israeli forces that over 100 days since has turned much of Gaza into a wasteland and killed, health officials say, some 24,100 people and wounded nearly 61,000. Health officials said 132 were killed in the past 24 hours, suggesting to Palestinians that there has been little let-up in the intensity of Israel's offensive despite its announcement of a shift to a new, more targeted phase.

Israel's military has said it will devote months of more targeted operations against the leaders and positions of Hamas in the south after an initial all-out offensive centred on clearing the heavily built-up northern end of the Strip. HOSTAGES

Hamas aired video on Sunday showing three Israeli hostages it is holding in Gaza and urged the Israeli government to halt its aerial and ground offensive and bring about their release. The undated 37-second video of Noa Argamani, 26, Yossi Sharabi, 53, and Itai Svirsky, 38, ended with the caption: "Tomorrow (Monday) we will inform you of their fate."

On Monday, maintaining the psychological pressure, Hamas released a video clip featuring the faces of the three hostages and the question, "What do you think?" The clip then offers three options, in which all three are killed, "some are killed, some are injured", or all three are spared. The video ends with the message: "Tonight we will inform you of their fate." Around half of the 240 hostages taken by Hamas in its Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel were released during a short-lived November truce, but Israel says 132 remain in Gaza and that 25 have died in captivity.

Almost two million displaced people are sheltering in tents and other temporary accommodation in southern Gaza amid the fighting, and are facing increased risks of starvation and disease due to chronic shortages of food, fuel and medicines. United Nations agencies renewed their appeal on Monday for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.

"We need unimpeded, safe access to deliver aid and a humanitarian ceasefire to prevent further death and suffering," said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization (WHO), adding that hunger would further harm the sick and make "an already terrible situation catastrophic". A video clip circulating on social media showed crowds of people running beside U.N. vehicles on a beach in Gaza City hoping to get some aid. People were then shown carrying away bags of flour. Reuters was able to verify the location shown in the clip but not the date it was filmed.

HOUTHIS With fears growing of a wider conflict in the Middle East, the U.S. military said on Sunday its fighter aircraft shot down an anti-ship cruise missile fired from Houthi militant areas of Yemen toward a U.S. destroyer operating in the Southern Red Sea.

The midair interception is the latest incident in the Red Sea where the Houthis have been attacking international shipping in what they say is a campaign to support Palestinians under siege from Israeli forces in Gaza. It follows a series of American and British airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen last week that have drawn threats of a "strong" response from the Iranian-backed militia.

The Houthis' chief negotiator, Mohammed Abdulsalam, told Reuters on Monday that the group's attacks

on shipping would continue until Israel halts its offensive in Gaza and humanitarian aid is allowed to flow freely into the Strip. (Additional reporting by Bernard Orr and Ryan Woo in Beijing and Chandni Shah in Bengaluru Writing by Gareth Jones Editing by Mark Heinrich)

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)