DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Hospital officials say an Israeli airstrike killed 17 Palestinians on Tuesday in a military-declared “safe zone” outside the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

Officials at Nasser Hospital said the strike hit near a gas station in Muwasi, an area packed with tent camps housing thousands of Palestinians who have fled Israeli offensives in other parts of Gaza. The site lies in a humanitarian “safe zone” where the Israeli military has told evacuating Palestinians to take refuge.

The strike raises to at least 59 the number of people killed in southern and central Gaza by strikes overnight into Tuesday.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

Israeli strikes across Gaza killed more than 30 people as Israel and Hamas continued to weigh the latest cease-fire proposal.

In central Gaza, strikes overnight into Tuesday killed 24 people. The deaths in Nuseirat and Zawaida included 10 women and four children.

Hamas has said cease-fire talks meant to wind down the nine-month-long war would continue even after Israel targeted the militant group’s top military commander, Mohammed Deif, whose fate remained unclear. Israel says another senior Hamas militant was killed in that strike that local health officials said killed 90 Palestinians, including children.

International mediators are working to push Israel and Hamas toward a deal that would halt the fighting and free about 120 hostages held by the militant group in Gaza.

The strikes late Monday and early Tuesday hit four homes, according to emergency workers. An Associated Press journalist saw the bodies, some wrapped in blankets and a floral sheet, as they were ferried to Al Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah.

Clouds of smoke from Israeli strikes rose above the city.

The military said it “conducted targeted raids on terror targets” in central Gaza, without elaborating. It did not immediately provide details on the targets.

In southern Gaza, nine people were killed in two separate strikes overnight Monday, according to medical officials and AP journalists. Four were killed in a blast that struck a house in eastern Khan Younis and five were killed in a strike on a street in southernmost Rafah, according to ambulance workers who transported the bodies to Nasser Hospital.

An AP journalist counted the bodies at the hospital before a funeral was held at its gates.

The military said air force planes struck some 40 targets in Gaza over the past day, among them observation posts, Hamas military structures and explosives-rigged buildings.

The war in Gaza, which was sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, has killed more than 38,600 people, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The war has created a humanitarian catastrophe in the coastal Palestinian territory, displaced most of its 2.3 million population and triggered widespread hunger.

Hamas’ October attack killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and militants took about 250 hostage. About 120 remain in captivity, with about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.

Violence has also surged in the West Bank. On Tuesday a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli policeman, wounding him lightly, before another officer opened fire, killing the assailant who was identified as a 19-year-old from Gaza.

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The U.S. and Germany managed to thwart a Russian plot that would have killed the head of a major German arms manufacturer as part of a sabotage campaign against Ukrainian allies and support across Europe, intelligence officials revealed. 

“In view of the latest reports on Rheinmetall, this is what we have actually been communicating more and more clearly in recent months: Russia is waging a hybrid war of aggression,” Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, said on the sidelines of this week’s NATO summit. 

“We have seen that there have been attacks on people on European territory,” she explained. “We have seen that there have been attacks on factories, and this underlines once again that we as Europeans must protect ourselves as best we can and not be naive.”

CNN first reported on the allegation, citing five U.S. and Western officials familiar with the episode, claiming that it was one of “a series” of plots to assassinate defense industry executives across Europe in an effort to cripple Ukraine’s support network.

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Rheinmetall serves as the leading manufacturer of large artillery shells, which have proven key to Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s ongoing war. The manufacturer even plans to open an armored vehicle plant inside Ukraine in the coming weeks. 

The Guardian described Rheinmetall as a “thorn in Moscow’s side” since the invasion of Ukraine started, providing a range of weapons and tanks for Ukraine, including the Leopard 1 tank and Marder infantry fighting vehicles. 

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Armin Papperger, chief executive officer of Rheinmetall AG, speaks during the Federation of German Industries (BDI) conference in Berlin on Tuesday, June 25, 2024. (Liesa Johannssen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The plot to kill Rheinmetall’s CEO Armin Papperger emerged earlier this year, with U.S. intelligence uncovering the plot and informing German counterparts so they could act. German intelligence later informed Rheinmetall of what had unfolded after the fact. 

A Rheinmetall spokesperson told Politico that there was no concrete attempt but simply a “plot” that the German intelligence stopped from advancing. The company also stressed that “necessary measures are always taken” in conjunction with security authorities to safeguard personnel. 

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Rebekah Koffler said the plot to kill Rheinmetall’s CEO Armin Papperger would come “straight out of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s Playbook.” (Reuters)

Rebekah Koffler, a freelance consultant for international, politics and world news, told Fox News Digital that the plot to kill Papperger would come “straight out of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s Playbook,” handling what she called the “wet deeds” doctrine.

“’Wet deeds’ are targeted assassinations conducted by Russian intelligence services on Putin’s orders to eliminate the so-called enemies of the state,” Koffler explained, adding that such activities are authorized by Russian federal law to counter “extreme activity,” including killings, kidnappings, poisonings, “forced suicides” and “other acts of intimidation and murder.” 

A senior NATO official told reporters at the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., that Russia has increased its efforts to sabotage Ukraine’s support network throughout Europe, warning that Moscow is engaging in sabotage, assassination plots and arson – “things that have cost in human lives.” 

“I believe very much that we’re seeing a campaign of cover sabotage activities from Russia that have strategic consequences,” the official said. 

Police in Kenya have fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters aiming to keep pressure on President William Ruto after he made a series of concessions to demonstrators.

Activists behind weeks of protests that were initially sparked by proposed tax hikes called for a “total shutdown” of the country on Tuesday.

The protests have created the biggest crisis of Ruto’s two years in power and have continued even after the president withdrew $2.7bn in tax hikes and fired nearly his entire cabinet.

Many demonstrators are demanding that Ruto step down, blaming him for misgovernance, corruption and the deaths of dozens of protesters during earlier antigovernment rallies.

On Tuesday, police fired tear gas in Kitengela, a town on the southern outskirts of the capital, Nairobi, where about 200 protesters burned tyres and chanted, “Ruto must go!” and “Stop killing us.”

Riot police in Nairobi’s city centre also fired tear gas as a few dozen protesters chanted for Ruto to step down. Demonstrators in the coastal city of Mombasa marched while waving palm fronds, footage from Kenyan media showed.

Ruto’s office had announced “multisectoral” talks for this week to address grievances raised by the protesters, but there was no sign they had begun. Most of the leading activists behind the protests have rejected the invitation, instead calling for immediate action on issues like corruption.

With Kenya’s government spending more than 30 percent of its revenue just paying the interest on its debt, Ruto has been caught between the demands of lenders to cut deficits and a hard-pressed population reeling from the rising cost of living.

The protests began peacefully last month but later turned violent. Some demonstrators briefly stormed parliament on June 25, and the police opened fire. More than 40 people have been killed in the protests, rights groups said.

Ruto on Monday accused the Ford Foundation, an American philanthropic organisation, of sponsoring those who caused “violence and mayhem” in Kenya, without providing evidence.

The Ford Foundation rejected the allegation, saying it did not fund or sponsor the protests and has a strictly nonpartisan policy for awarding its grants.