Israeli airstrikes in southern Gaza killed at least 17 people late Tuesday, nearly all of them women or children, the territory’s Health Ministry said.

Five kids were killed in the same tent as they sheltered together in a camp for displaced Palestinians in Muwasi, said Ahmed al-Farra, director of the child ward at Nasser Hospital in nearby Khan Younis. Their bodies were among the eight children and five women brought to the hospital.

The strikes tore into tents for displaced Palestinians, a car and two houses in the Khan Younis area, the hospital said. Two of the dead were men, and the two in the vehicle were unidentifiable.

In the morgue, bodies lay on stretchers or stacked on metal shelves. A young girl in a fuzzy pink sweatshirt rested with her head in the lap of another girl. Other corpses, some disfigured by the explosions, were covered in blankets.

The Israeli military said it targeted militants who had taken part in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that sparked the war, without providing evidence. Israel said it took steps to lessen the risk of harming civilians and blamed Hamas for the civilian casualties.

It was not immediately clear if that strike that killed the five children was inside the area in Muwasi Israel’s military designated a humanitarian safe zone but has repeatedly targeted.

Muwasi is a desolate coastal area where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering in makeshift tents during the cold and rainy winter.

In other developments in the Gaza war:

Israel defends arrest of hospital director

As international condemnation mounts over the Israeli military’s arrest late last month of the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said Tuesday that it had new evidence that militant groups had used the hospital as a command center.

The military released footage of what it said was an interrogation of one of the more than 240 militants it had arrested in raiding the hospital, saying it backed up Israel’s allegations that Hamas and other armed groups deliberately embed themselves in hospitals in violation of international law.

The New York Times was not able to independently verify the claims made in the video, or to determine the circumstances under which the detainee made the admission. Israel has detained many Palestinians in Sde Teiman, an army base in southern Israel, where many have been held in demeaning conditions and in which former detainees described beatings and other abuse. The Israeli military has denied accusations of systematic abuse there.

Ireland joins genocide case against Israel

Ireland has formally asked to intervene in South Africa’s case accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, the International Court of Justice said Tuesday.

The request submitted in the Hague on Monday has roiled Irish relations with Israel.

Israel, which denies the allegations, announced last month that it would close its embassy in Ireland after the Irish government decided to intervene in South Africa’s case.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said the “antisemitic rhetoric of the Irish government against Israel are rooted in efforts to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state.”

In May, Israel recalled its ambassador to Dublin after Ireland announced along with Norway, Spain and Slovenia it would recognize a Palestinian state.

Several other countries have also intervened in the case: Nicaragua, Colombia, Libya, Mexico, Palestine, Spain, Chile, Bolivia, the Maldives and Turkey.

Israel launches raids on West Bank militants

The Israeli military launched a wave of raids across the occupied West Bank overnight and into Tuesday, killing at least three Palestinians it said were militants a day after a deadly shooting attack.

The army said it killed two militants in an airstrike after they fired at troops in the area of Tamun in the northern West Bank. It said another militant was killed in “close-quarters combat” in the nearby village of Taluza and an Israeli soldier was severely wounded. The military said it arrested more than 20 suspected militants.

Hamas said in a statement that one of its veteran commanders, Jaafar Dababsah, was killed by Israeli forces in the area of the two deadly raids.

The Israeli army said the overnight operations were not related to Monday’s shooting in which gunmen opened fire on a bus carrying Israelis in the West Bank, killing two women in their 70s and a 35-year-old policeman before fleeing.

The Palestinian Health Ministry says at least 840 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza. At least 46 Israelis, including 19 soldiers, have been killed in violent attacks by Palestinian militants, according to the U.N.