As the nearly 15-month war in Gaza entered a new calendar year, local health and civil defense officials reported Israeli strikes across the territory that they said left at least 13 people dead early Wednesday. The latest wave followed strikes that left 12 people dead and 41 injured in the final 48 hours of 2024, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Six people were killed Wednesday — including three children and two women — in the home of a family in the Shejaiya area, east of Gaza City, according to Gaza’s civil defense.

At least five people were killed the same day in an Israeli airstrike on a family residence in Jabalya in northern Gaza, the civil defense said.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces said it carried out an operation overnight Tuesday in Jabalya, targeting a Hamas sniper unit and other militants. It did not respond to requests for comment on the other strikes.

At least two other people were killed by the IDF at al-Manara roundabout in Khan Younis, the civil defense said. Citing medical officials at Gaza’s Nasser Hospital and European Hospital, which received the bodies, the Associated Press reported that a strike in Khan Younis killed three people.

The IDF announced that it launched strikes on the Bureij area of the Gaza Strip overnight Tuesday to hit what it said was “a terror operative in a structure in the area” that had earlier launched rockets toward the western Negev area of southern Israel.

The Israeli air force struck more than 1,400 targets in the Gaza Strip in December, the IDF said Wednesday.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz visited the city of Netivot in southern Israel on Wednesday, a day after Hamas fired two rockets toward the city, the Israeli Defense Ministry said in a statement.

“If Hamas does not release the hostages from Gaza soon, despite Israel’s willingness to make far-reaching compromises in accordance with the principles outlined by the U.S. President, and continues firing rockets at Israeli communities — it will suffer blows of a magnitude not seen in Gaza for a long time,” Katz said, according to a ministry statement.

As winter deepens, the already dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza could continue to worsen, aid agencies and local officials warn, with nearly 2 million people displaced by the war left with little protection from the elements. At least six babies have died in recent days of hypothermia, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said this week.

The IDF and the Israeli military agency known as COGAT (the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories) announced that 127 Gazan patients, mostly children, left the Gaza Strip with their caregivers Tuesday to receive medical treatment in the United Arab Emirates. The operation was carried out through cooperation between Israel, the UAE and the World Health Organization.

More than 45,553 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry, along with emergency service officials and hospitals, does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but says the majority of those killed have been women and children.

Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, including more than 300 soldiers. It says 391 soldiers have been killed in its military operation in Gaza.