Middle East latest: Israeli strikes kill 30 people overnight in Gaza

Israeli strikes killed at least 30 people overnight in Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials. Strikes early Tuesday killed 10 people in the Gaza Strip, including four children and two women, and a strike late Monday on the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya killed at least 20 people, including eight women and six children.

Israel has been waging a massive offensive in northern Gaza — which was already the most isolated and heavily destroyed part of the territory — for nearly a month.

Despite growing pressure from the United States and others in the international community for a cease-fire in Gaza and Lebanon, intensified Israeli strikes against the Hezbollah militant group are expanding beyond Lebanon’s border areas. Israel is also fighting a seemingly endless war against Hamas in northern Gaza.

Since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah erupted in 2023, at least 3,000 people have been killed and some 13,500 wounded in Lebanon, the Health Ministry reports.

More than a year of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 people, Palestinian health officials say. They do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but say more than half of those killed were women and children. The war began after Palestinian militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 250 others.

Here’s the latest:

BEIRUT — The Lebanese Red Cross will send another convoy Tuesday to Wata al-Khiam in southern Lebanon to search for and remove the bodies of 15 people killed in an Israeli airstrike, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said.

Paramedics accessed the site of the strike two days prior and removed five other bodies, but needed to return with larger vehicles to remove the rubble. The NNA said the deployment is in coordination with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, which is the usual procedure.

The Red Cross did not immediately comment on the news, but expressed concern in recent weeks over several instances where Israel has struck in or close to areas where they have deployed paramedics to search for wounded people and casualties.

The Israeli military said it issued warnings to the residents there in late October to evacuate ahead of strikes on Hezbollah militant targets, and told ambulances to avoid the area.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Palestinian medical officials say an Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip has killed at least 20 people, mostly women and children.

Hossam Abu Safiya, the director of a nearby hospital that received the casualties, said the strike late Monday hit a home in the town of Beit Lahiya where multiple families were sheltering.

The dead included eight women and six children, according to a list provided by the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Israel has been waging a massive offensive in northern Gaza — which was already the most isolated and heavily destroyed part of the territory — for nearly a month. It ordered the complete evacuation of Beit Lahiya, the nearby town of Beit Hanoun, and the urban Jabaliya refugee camp, and has allowed almost no humanitarian aid into the area for over a month.

Tens of thousands of people have fled to nearby Gaza City in the latest wave of displacement in the war, which began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Palestinian officials say Israeli strikes early Tuesday killed 10 people in the Gaza Strip, including four children and two women.

One strike hit a house in the Tufah neighborhood in Gaza City, killing two children and their parents, according to the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service. Two other children were wounded, it said.

In the central town of Zuweida, an Israeli airstrike hit a tent where a displaced family was sheltering, killing four people, including a mother and her two children, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the nearby city of Deir al-Balah.

Another strike hit a house in Deir al-Balah, killing two people, the hospital said.

An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies at the hospital morgue.

The Israeli military says it only targets militants and accuses them of hiding among civilians. It rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.

The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking another 250 hostage. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel’s offensive has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which says over half were women and children. It does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian officials say Israeli forces have killed three people in the occupied West Bank.

Two were killed in an airstrike early Tuesday near the northern city of Jenin, a flashpoint for Israeli-Palestinian violence in recent years. A third person was shot in the village of Tamoun, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

The Israeli military said it called in an airstrike on a militant cell near Jenin. There was no immediate comment on the shooting.

Israeli forces have carried out near-daily military raids in the West Bank since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack out of the Gaza Strip triggered the Israel-Hamas war. The Health Ministry says at least 767 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since then. Most appear to have been militants killed in battles with Israeli forces, but the dead also include civilian bystanders and people killed during protests.

Israel says the raids are aimed at dismantling Hamas in the West Bank and preventing attacks. Palestinians have carried out dozens of stabbing, shooting and car-ramming attacks against Israelis since the start of the war.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want it to form the main part of their future state.

Israeli army investigators arrive at the site of the early morning attack of Israeli settlers, that left at least 18 burnt vehicles, on the outskirts of the West Bank city of al-Bireh Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

Palestinians mourn over the body of Naji al-Baba,16, who the Palestinian Health Ministry said was killed by Israeli forces in the town of Halhul, West Bank, during his funeral on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Palestinians mourn over the body of Naji al-Baba,16, who the Palestinian Health Ministry said was killed by Israeli forces in the town of Halhul, West Bank, during his funeral on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Palestinians inspect vehicles that were burnt during an early morning attack by Israeli settlers, that left at least 18 burnt vehicles, on the outskirts of the West Bank city of al-Bireh Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

Palestinians inspect vehicles that were burnt during an early morning attack by Israeli settlers, that left at least 18 burnt vehicles, on the outskirts of the West Bank city of al-Bireh Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

Mourners carry the body of Naji al-Baba,16, who the Palestinian Health Ministry said was killed by Israeli forces in the town of Halhul, West Bank, during his funeral on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

VALENCIA, Spain (AP) — In a matter of minutes, flash floods caused by heavy downpours in eastern Spain swept away almost everything in their path. With no time to react, people were trapped in vehicles, homes and businesses. Many died and thousands of livelihoods were shattered.

A week later, authorities have recovered 217 bodies — with 213 of them in the eastern Valencia region. Police, firefighters and soldiers continued to search Tuesday for an unknown number of missing people.

In many of the 69 devastated localities, mostly located in the southern outskirts of Valencia city, people still face shortages of basic goods. Water is back to running through pipes but authorities say it is only for cleaning and not fit for drinking. Lines form at impromptu emergency kitchens and food relief stands in streets still covered with mud and debris.

Thousands of volunteers are helping soldiers and police reinforcements with the gargantuan task of cleaning up the mire and the countless wrecked cars. The ground floors of thousands of homes have been ruined. Inside some of the vehicles that the water washed away or trapped in underground garages, there were still bodies waiting to be identified.

But the frustration over the crisis management boiled over on Sunday when a crowd in hard-hit Paiporta hurled mud and other objects at Spain’s royals, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and regional officials when they made their first visit to the epicenter of the flood damage.

Here are a few things to know about Spain’s deadliest storm in living memory:

The storms concentrated over the Magro and Turia river basins and, in the Poyo riverbed, produced walls of water that overflowed riverbanks, catching people unaware as they went on with their daily lives on Tuesday evening and early Wednesday.

In the blink of an eye, the muddy water covered roads and railways, and entered houses and businesses in towns and villages on the southern outskirts of Valencia city. Drivers had to take shelter on car roofs, while residents took refuge on higher ground.

Spain’s national weather service said that in the hard-hit locality of Chiva, it rained more in eight hours than it had in the preceding 20 months, calling the deluge “extraordinary.” Other areas on the southern outskirts of Valencia city didn't get rain before they were wiped out by the wall of water that overflowed the drainage canals.

When authorities sent alerts to mobile phones warning of the seriousness of the flooding and asking people to stay at home, many were already on the road, working or covered in water in low-lying areas or underground garages, which became death traps.

Scientists trying to explain what happened see two likely connections to human-caused climate change. One is that warmer air holds and then dumps more rain. The other is possible changes in the jet stream — the river of air above land that moves weather systems across the globe — that spawn extreme weather.

Climate scientists and meteorologists said the immediate cause of the flooding is called a cut-off lower-pressure storm system that migrated from an unusually wavy and stalled jet stream. That system simply parked over the region and poured rain. This happens often enough that in Spain they call them DANAs, the Spanish acronym for the system, meteorologists said.

And then there is the unusually high temperature of the Mediterranean Sea. It had its warmest surface temperature on record in mid-August, at 28.47 degrees Celsius (83.25 degrees Fahrenheit), said Carola Koenig of the Centre for Flood Risk and Resilience at Brunel University of London.

The extreme weather event came after Spain battled with prolonged droughts in 2022 and 2023. Experts say that drought and flood cycles are increasing with climate change.

Spain’s Mediterranean coast is used to autumn storms that can cause flooding, but this episode was the most powerful flash flood event in recent memory.

Older people in Paiporta, at the epicenter of the tragedy, say Tuesday’s floods were three times as bad as those in 1957, which caused at least 81 deaths. That episode led to the diversion of the Turia watercourse, which meant that a large part of the town was spared of these floods.

Valencia suffered two other major DANAs in the 1980s, one in 1982 with around 30 deaths, and another one five years later that broke rainfall records.

The flash floods also surpassed the flood that swept away a campsite along the Gallego river in Biescas, in the northeast, killing 87 people, in August 1996.

Management of the crisis, classified as level two on a scale of three by the Valencian government, is in the hands of the regional authorities, who can ask the central government for help in mobilizing resources.

Some 7,500 soldiers, trucks, heavy road equipment and Chinook helicopters have been deployed in addition to nearly 10,000 extra police officers from the National Police and Civil Guard to help with the search for bodies and the distribution of relief aid.

When many of those affected said they felt abandoned by the authorities, a wave of volunteers arrived to help. Carrying brooms, shovels, water and basic foods, hundreds of people walked several kilometers to deliver supplies and help clean up the worst-affected areas.

Sánchez’s government will approve a disaster declaration on Tuesday that will allow quick access to financial aid. Mazón has announced additional economic assistance.

The Valencia regional government has been heavily criticized for not sending out flood warnings to cellphones until 8 p.m. on Tuesday, when the flooding had already started in some places and well after the national weather agency issued a red alert indicating heavy rains.

Part of a rotating World Globe Map showing Spain is covered in mud after floods in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

A "Falla" figure structure made of cardboard and other materials is damaged in an area affected by floods in Catarroja, Spain, on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

People walk through an area affected by floods in Catarroja, Spain, on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

A woman stacks belongings covered in mud from a house in Catarroja, Spain, on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

People clean items covered in mud in an area affected by floods in Catarroja, Spain, on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Civil Guards walk in a flooded indoor car park to check cars for bodies after floods in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

Civil Guards walk in a flooded indoor car park to check cars for bodies after floods in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

A man wipes mud off his face in an area affected by floods in Catarroja, Spain, on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Spain's King Felipe VI is protected after a crowd of angry survivors of Spain's floods have tossed mud and shouted insults at the King and government officials when they made their first visit to one of the hardest hit towns after floods in Paiporta near Valencia, Spain, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hugo Torres)

Volunteers carry buckets of mud after floods in Paiporta, Spain, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hugo Torres)

A car sticks out of a garage with debris after flooding in Valencia, Spain, Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

A woman pushes a supermarket trolley with food in a muddy street after floods in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hugo Torres)

A woman pushes a bicycle along a muddy street after floods in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hugo Torres)

A man pours muddy water out of the entrance of a building after floods in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hugo Torres)

Residents and volunteers sweep away mud after floods in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hugo Torres)

Residents stand on their balconies above destroyed furniture below after floods in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hugo Torres)

Two men carry a bucket of mud after floods in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hugo Torres)

A woman rests as residents and volunteers clean up an area affected by floods in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

Firefighters walk as people try to clear up the damage after floods in Massanassa, just outside of Valencia, Spain, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

Residents carry their belongings as they leave their houses affected by floods in Valencia, Spain, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

Residents clean their house affected by floods in Valencia, Spain, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

Vehicles are seen piled up after being swept away by floods in Valencia, Spain, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

Flooded cars piled up are pictured in Valencia, Spain, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)

Residents from the Valencia area walk carrying cleaning instruments to help in the flooded areas in the La Torre neighbourhood of Valencia, Spain, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

A woman rests as residents and volunteers clean up an area affected by floods in Paiporta, near Valencia, Spain, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Alberto Saiz)

People clean mud from a shop affected by floods in Chiva, Spain, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)