GAZA CITY: Gaza health officials said Israeli strikes killed six people across the Palestinian territory on Wednesday and wounded several others, including the son of Hamas’s chief negotiator.
A senior officer in the Hamas-run Interior Ministry was also killed.
Despite an October ceasefire, Gaza remains gripped by daily violence as Israeli strikes continue, with both the military and Hamas accusing one another of violating the truce, AFP reported.
“Five people have been killed since this morning in strikes by the occupation on the Gaza Strip,” the civil defense agency, which operates as a rescue service under Hamas, said.
Gaza City’s Al-Ahli hospital reported receiving “three dead and a number of wounded following an Israeli drone strike on the Zeitoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City.”
A separate strike on the Al-Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City killed one person and wounded 10 others, including the son of Hamas’s chief negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya, the hospital and a security source said.
Azzam Khalil Al-Hayya has been “seriously wounded in the Israeli airstrike,” the security source told AFP.
Two more people were killed and more than a dozen wounded in Israeli attacks in other parts of the territory, the civil defense agency and hospitals said.
Medics said the airstrike killed Naseem Al-Kalazani, a colonel in the Hamas-run police force, when it targeted his vehicle near the Al-Mawasi area in western Khan Younis, in the south of the enclave, Reuters reported.
Kalazani led the anti-narcotics force in Khan Younis, Hamas sources said.
The ceasefire has largely halted the Gaza war that began after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
But violence has persisted, with at least 837 Palestinians killed since the truce began, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which operates under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.
Over the same period, the Israeli military said five soldiers have been killed in Gaza.
More than 72,500 Palestinians have been killed since the Gaza war started in October 2023, most of them civilians, according to Gaza health authorities.
- With AFP and Reuters
