dpa
Gaza/Tel Aviv/Cairo
Israeli forces shelled a hospital in Beit Lahia, in the north of the Gaza Strip, causing extensive damage and destroying medical supplies, the Hamas-run Palestinian health authority said on Thursday.
A spokesman for the Israeli armed forces said the reports were being investigated.
The shelling hit the third floor of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, the authority said.
A military spokesman said some 100 terrorist suspects were arrested on the hospital grounds after some had barricaded themselves inside the facility. The Israeli spokesman said soldiers found weapons, funds and other material in and near the hospital.
The information from both sides could not initially be independently verified.
The hospital director recently posted on social media that his son was killed in the latest Israeli airstrikes.
Israeli forces have attacked the hospital several times since the conflict began, and on Monday said an operation there had been completed.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been conducting intensive operations in the northern Gaza Strip, an area they had previously declared cleared. But in recent weeks the army has escalated its air and ground operations.
Dozens of people died in an Israeli attack on a residential building in Beit Lahia on Tuesday.
The conflict began after Hamas and others from the Gaza Strip attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting up to 250, more than a year ago.
Israel then launched a massive retaliation, which the Gaza authority says has resulted in more than 43,000 deaths.
Israel has come under international criticism given the high number of civilian casualties and dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, Palestinian reports said on Thursday that three people have been killed in an Israeli military operation near the city of Tulkarem in the northern West Bank.
Palestinian media reported that one of them was a leading member of Hamas in Tulkarem. Two other men were killed in a drone attack.
Rockets fired from Lebanon killed at least seven people in northern Israel on Thursday, as the conflict raged along the border and also in Syria and in northern Gaza.
Five people were killed near the Israeli border town of Metula by rockets launched from Lebanon, the public broadcaster Kan reported.
Among those were an Israeli farmer and four foreign workers. One person was seriously injured. The Israeli military said two missiles had hit a field near Metula.
A few hours later, two people were killed near the city of Haifa in a further barrage from Lebanon. A spokesman for the Magen David Adom rescue service confirmed on Israeli television that the two had been hit by rocket fragments in the town of Shfaram. Three people were injured and are being treated.
Iran-backed Hezbollah has been firing rockets across the border for over a year.
