Israelis protest in the streets again as the toll in Gaza grows

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israelis again poured into the streets for another large protest over the government’s failure to secure the return of remaining hostages in Gaza, while hospital and local authorities said Israeli air raids in the territory killed more than a dozen people overnight into Saturday.

Health workers wrapped up the second phase of an urgent polio vaccination campaign designed to prevent a large-scale outbreak. The drive, launched after the first polio case in the Palestinian enclave in 25 years, aims to vaccinate 640,000 children. The third phase of vaccinations will be in the north.

Israel kept up its military offensive. In central Gaza, nine people were killed in two air raids.

Separately, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, central Gaza’s main hospital, said three were killed in a strike on a house in Bureij.

In northern Gaza, an airstrike on a school-turned-shelter in the town of Jabaliya killed at least four people and wounded about two dozen others, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense authority, which operates under the territory’s Hamas-run government. Israel’s military said it struck a Hamas command post embedded in a former school compound.

Anger again led large crowds of Israelis into the streets Saturday night, a week after one of the largest demonstrations of the war following the discovery of another six dead hostages in Gaza.

Violence has also spiked in the occupied West Bank.

A day after an American protester was shot and killed in the West Bank, her family urged President Joe Biden to order an independent investigation, saying that “given the circumstances of Aysenur’s killing, an Israeli investigation is not adequate.” Their statement called the 26-year-old recent university graduate a “ray of sunshine” and an advocate for human dignity.

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi also holds Turkish nationality. She had been demonstrating against Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Witnesses said she was shot during a moment of calm following earlier clashes.

The White House has said it was “deeply disturbed” and called on Israel to investigate. The Israeli military said it was looking into reports that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an “instigator of violent activity.”

Israel has been under increasing pressure from the United States and other allies to reach a cease-fire deal in Gaza, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on continued Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow band along Gaza’s border with Egypt where Israel contends Hamas smuggles weapons. Egypt and Hamas deny it.

Hamas has offered to release all hostages in return for an end to the war, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile terrorists — broadly the terms called for under an outline for a deal put forward by Biden in July.

Along the border with Lebanon, near-daily clashes continued between Israeli forces and the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah.

An Israeli drone strike hit a Lebanese Civil Defense team fighting a fire in the town of Froun, killing three volunteers and wounding two others, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said.

Israel’s military said some 45 rockets were fired at northern Israel, many targeting the Mount Meron area but falling in open areas. Several rockets fell in Shlomi and around the city of Safed. There were no injuries. The military later said its jets struck Hezbollah military infrastructure and a rocket launcher in southern Lebanon.