ISRAELI forces killed at least 18 Palestinians today, including four people sheltering in a tent camp inside a hospital complex in Gaza.

This comes as two people were killed during a stabbing incident in a Tel Aviv suburb.

Tensions have soared following nearly 10 months of war in Gaza and the assassinations, widely blamed on Israel, of a Hamas leader in Iran and a senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon within 12 hours of each other last week. 

Those killings brought threats of revenge from Iran and its allies and raised fears of an even more destructive regional war.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said today’s strike hit a tent camp in Gaza housing displaced Palestinians in the courtyard of al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Four people were killed including one woman and others were injured, the Health Ministry said.

The Israeli military said it targeted a Palestinian resistance fighter in the strike, which it said caused secondary explosions, “indicating the presence of weaponry in the area.”

The hospital in Deir al-Balah is the main medical facility operating in central Gaza and thousands of people have taken shelter there after fleeing their homes in the war-ravaged territory. 

A separate strike on a home near Deir al-Balah killed a girl and her parents, according to the hospital.

Another flattened a house in northern Gaza, killing at least eight people, including three children, their parents and their grandmother, the ministry said. 

And a further three people were killed in a strike on a vehicle in Gaza City, according to first responders Civil Defence.

An Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City on Saturday killed at least 16 people and wounded another 21, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which announced the toll on Sunday. 

As with previous strikes on schools, the Israeli military said it had struck a Hamas command centre and accused the Palestinian group of sheltering in civilian areas.

A woman in her seventies and an 80-year-old man were killed in the stabbing attack in Tel Aviv, according to Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service and a nearby hospital, while two other men were wounded. The police said the Palestinian attacker had been “neutralised.”

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Some 1,200 people died during a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7 and around 250 people were taken hostage.

Israel’s massive retaliation has killed at least 39,550 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, and displaced the vast majority of Gaza's 2.3 million people, often multiple times.