TEL AVIV — Israeli strikes this weekend killed dozens of people in Gaza, including four who were sheltering in a tent camp for displaced people inside a hospital complex, while a stabbing attack carried out by a Palestinian killed two people in a Tel Aviv suburb.
A woman in her 70s and an 80-year-old man were killed in the stabbing attack, according to Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service and a nearby hospital, and two other men were wounded. The police said the attack was carried out by a Palestinian militant, who was “neutralized,” and that a search was underway for other suspects.
The rescuers said the wounded were found in three different locations, each about 500 yards apart, adding to concerns that more than one assailant was involved.
Tensions have soared following nearly 10 months of war in Gaza and the killing of two senior militants in separate strikes in Lebanon and Iran last week. Those killings brought threats of revenge from Iran and its allies and raised fears of an even more destructive regional war.
Israel is bracing for a potential multiday attack by Iran and Hezbollah, with waves of missiles and drones fired over an extended period, an Israeli official told NBC News.
“They’ll just try to wear us out,” the official said.
When Iran attacked Israel on April 13 — in response to the bombing of its embassy in Damascus — it fired 300 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones in tight volleys so the different projectiles would reach Israel simultaneously. The vast majority were intercepted by Israeli and U.S. forces, while Hezbollah largely stayed out of the fight.
This time, the Israeli official said the attacks could come over several days, with Hezbollah attacking Israel from the north while Iran’s longer-range weapons are fired from the east.
The Israeli official described a phone call between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu on Thursday as “tense.”
The call came a day after the assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, and Biden has said publicly that the killing was not helpful for Gaza cease-fire talks.
“There is strong U.S. pressure to reach a cease-fire. Biden wants it to happen during his time in office,” the official said, adding that Israeli negotiators were in Cairo on Saturday for continuing negotiations but left without a breakthrough.
Across the border, the U.S., the U.K. and France have told their citizens not to go to Lebanon, and advised those already there to leave. The U.S. Embassy in Beirut encouraged those who wished to depart Lebanon to "book any ticket available to them."
Air France extended its suspension of flights between Paris and Beirut until Aug. 6, citing the security situation. “The resuming of service will be subject of a new assessment of the situation on the ground," the company said in a statement.
According to a report in Israeli media thousands of Israelis are now unable to return home due to flight cancellations.
In Gaza, an Israeli strike earlier on Sunday hit a tent camp housing displaced people in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, killing four people, including one woman, and injuring others, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.
An Associated Press journalist filmed men rushing to the scene to help the wounded and retrieve bodies, while trying to extinguish the fire.
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 flattened a house in northern Gaza, killing at least eight people, including three children, their parents and their grandmother, according to the ministry.
An Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City on Saturday killed at least 25 people and wounded dozens, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which announced the toll on Sunday. Israel’s military, which regularly accuses Palestinian militants of sheltering in civilian areas, said it struck a Hamas command center.
Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians, but the military rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children. Gaza’s Health Ministry does not differentiate between civilians and militants in its tallies.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 people hostage in their surprise attack into southern Israel last October.
Israel’s massive offensive launched in Gaza has killed at least 39,550 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were militants. Heavy airstrikes and ground operations have caused widespread destruction and displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
Hezbollah has regularly traded fire with Israel along the Lebanon border since the start of the war, in what the militant group says is aimed at relieving pressure on its fellow Iran-backed ally, Hamas. The continuous strikes and counterstrikes have grown in severity in recent months, raising fears of an even more destructive regional war.
Over 590 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Most have been killed during Israeli raids and violent protests. Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want all three territories for their future state.