The US government estimates that Israel’s campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip will enter a new phase in the coming days, according to the US network CNN, which, citing a senior administration official in Washington, said that the Biden administration expects to reduce air strikes and strengthen the “strategic focus on the ground campaign”.

The official said the aim would likely be to “clean up” the vast network of underground tunnels used by Hamas. As humanitarian aid continues to arrive in the Gaza Strip, the US government expects “a reduction in what we have seen in terms of massive Israeli airstrikes”.

Since yesterday’s Israeli air strike against ambulances at the entrance of the largest hospital in Gaza, at least 15 people have died and 60 others have been injured, according to the latest report from the Hamas Health Ministry.

Israel confirmed the strikeunderlining that his target was a vehicle used by a “terrorist cell of Hamas”.

Ambulances “transported many injured people to be treated in Egypt,” said Ashraf al-Kudra, a spokesman for the health ministry in the Gaza Strip.

An AFP correspondent said he saw many dead and injured next to a damaged ambulance at the entrance to Al Shifa hospital, where thousands of displaced people have taken refuge. In footage broadcast by AFP television, civilians can be seen carrying the injured. Some were lying on the ground covered in blood, apparently hurled by the shock wave onto cars parked on the side of the road.

“Deeply shocked,” said the head of the World Health Organization. “We say it again: patients, medical staff, facilities and ambulances must be protected at all times. Always,” said Tedros Andanom Ghebreyesus, in his post on the X platform (formerly Twitter).

The UN humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories, Lynne Hastings, also expressed deep concern that the strike targeted “patients who were being evacuated for their safety”.

Hamas’ health ministry says 16 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals have been put out of business, either because they were bombed or because they ran out of fuel for their generators.

Since Wednesday, dozens of wounded Palestinians have crossed the border into Egypt as the Gaza Strip is pounded relentlessly by the Israeli Armed Forces (IDF).

The Israeli government has vowed to wipe out Hamas after militants from the Palestinian Islamist group invaded southern Israel on October 7, killing about 1,400 people and kidnapping more than 240 others and taking them to the Gaza Strip. Israel’s military retaliation has claimed the lives of more than 9,250 Palestinians, according to the health ministry of the Hamas-controlled Palestinian enclave.

20 dead from an Israeli strike on a school in northern Gaza

Twenty people were killed and dozens injured in an Israeli strike on a school in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, the health ministry of the Hamas-controlled Palestinian enclave announced today.

“Twenty witnesses and dozens of wounded were taken to Al-Sifah Hospital, in Gaza City, after the targeted attack on a school that had been turned into a makeshift camp for displaced persons in the Al-Saftawi area, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip,” the statement said.

With information from APE