RAMAT HAHARON, Israel — Israeli attacks in northern Gaza have killed at least 22 people, most of them women and children, Palestinian officials said Sunday, as Israel’s offensive in the hard-hit and isolated enclave entered its third week and the UN secretary-general said the plight of the Palestinians there “. unbearable.” Israel said it targeted the militants.

In a separate development, a truck drove into a bus station near Tel Aviv, killing one person and injuring more than 30. Israeli police said the attacker was an Arab citizen of Israel. The strike took place outside a military base and near the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad spy agency.

Iran’s supreme leader, meanwhile, said Saturday’s Israeli attacks on the country in response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack earlier this month “should not be exaggerated or downplayed,” without calling for retaliation. It was Israel’s first open attack on its enemy.

That exchange of fire has sparked fears of an all-out regional war pitting Israel and the United States against Iran and its militant proxies, which include Hamas and the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, where Israel launched a ground invasion earlier this month. after nearly a year of low-level conflict.

Two Israeli strikes killed eight people in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon and wounded 25, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. One shot hit a residential building, according to images taken by an Associated Press reporter.

The Israeli military said four soldiers, including a military rabbi, were killed in the fighting in southern Lebanon, without giving details. Five other staff members are said to have been seriously injured. An explosive drone and a projectile fired from Lebanon injured five people in Israel, authorities said.

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Netanyahu says strikes on Iran have achieved Israel’s goals

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his first public comments on the strikes, said “we have severely damaged Iran’s defense capabilities and its ability to produce missiles that are aimed at us.”

Satellite images showed damage at two secret Iranian military bases, one related to nuclear weapons work that Western intelligence agencies and nuclear inspectors say was halted in 2003, and another related to Iran’s ballistic missile program. Iran said on Sunday that a civilian had been killed, without giving details. Earlier, he said four people with the military air defense were killed.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s 85-year-old supreme leader, said it was “up to the authorities to determine how to convey the power and will of the Iranian people to the Israeli regime.” Khamenei would make any final decision on how Iran responds.

Later on Sunday, protesters disrupted a speech by Netanyahu at a nationally televised ceremony for the victims of the Hamas attack on southern Israel last year that sparked the Gaza war. People shouted “Shame on you” and forced Netanyahu to stop his speech. Many Israelis blame Netanyahu for the failures that led to the attack and hold him responsible for not yet bringing home the remaining hostages.

An Israeli official said Mossad chief David Barnea was traveling to Qatar for talks on a ceasefire and the release of the hostages. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release details.

Truck crash in Israel injures dozens

In Ramat Hasharon, northeast of Tel Aviv, the truck crashed into a bus as Israelis were returning to work after a holiday, leaving some people trapped under the vehicles.

Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said six of the injured were in serious condition. Ichilov Medical Center reported that one person died.

Asi Aharoni, a police spokesman, told reporters that the attacker had been “neutralized,” without saying whether the attacker was dead.

Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group praised the attack but did not claim it.

Palestinians have committed dozens of stabbings, shootings and car-ramming attacks over the years. Tensions have risen since the Gaza war began. Israel has carried out regular military raids in the occupied West Bank, which have caused hundreds of deaths. Most appear to have been militants killed during exchanges of fire with Israeli forces, but Palestinians participating in violent protests and civilian bystanders have also been killed.

“Appalling circumstances” in northern Gaza

The Gaza Ministry of Health’s emergency service announced that 11 women and two children were among the 22 killed in Saturday night’s strikes on several houses and buildings in the northern Gaza city of Beit Lahiya. 15 others were said to have been injured. The Israeli military said it carried out a strike against the militants.

Israel has waged a massive air and ground offensive in northern Gaza since early October, saying Hamas militants have regrouped there. Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled to Gaza City in the latest wave of displacement.

Civil defense first responders operating under the Hamas government in Gaza said they recovered a number of bodies following an Israeli airstrike Sunday on a school in the Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City.

Aid groups have warned of a catastrophic situation in northern Gaza, which has suffered the worst destruction of the war. Israel has sharply limited the entry of basic humanitarian aid in recent weeks, and the three remaining hospitals in the north – one raided over the weekend – say they have been overwhelmed by waves of wounded.

The UN secretary-general, in a statement from his spokesman, noted “appalling levels of death”. The International Committee of the Red Cross on Saturday described the civilian population in “appalling circumstances”.

The war began when militants led by Hamas punched holes in Israel’s border wall and stormed into southern Israel in a surprise attack on October 7, 2023. They killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped about 250. About 100 hostages are still inside. Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to have died.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but says more than half of those killed were women and children. Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The offensive has devastated much of Gaza and displaced about 90 percent of its population of 2.3 million, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands of people have been crammed into squalid tent camps, and aid groups say starvation is widespread.

Goldenberg reported from Tel Aviv, Israel, Magdy from Cairo and Krauss from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press reporters Wafaa Shurafa in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, Jon Gambrell in Dubai and Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran contributed to this report.