CAIRO: Israeli strikes and gunfire killed at least seven Palestinians, including a child, in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, the territory’s health officials said.
Medics said an Israeli airstrike killed a man and wounded two children in the Mawasi area of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. The Israeli military told Reuters they had targeted a Hamas militant.
Another Israeli airstrike hit near a tent encampment housing displaced families in western Gaza City, killing one person and wounding five others, medics said, while a third airstrike in Khan Younis killed one person and wounded three others. The Israeli military said both of those strikes had also targeted militants.
The Popular Resistance Committees, a militant group that has long carried out armed attacks against Israel, said one of the two Israeli strikes in Khan Younis had killed a senior leader of the group, Waheed Abu Salem. Later on Tuesday, one Palestinian was killed and nine others were wounded by Israeli gunfire in an area of Rafah in the south of Gaza, medics and witnesses said. Meanwhile, in Gaza City’s Tel Al-Hawa neighborhood, an Israeli airstrike hit a vehicle, killing three people, including a child, medics said, taking Tuesday’s death toll across the Gaza Strip to at least seven. One of the three dead was identified as Mohammad Al-Waheidi, who worked for the Egyptian relief committee, which provides aid to Palestinians in the enclave. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the last two incidents.
CEASEFIRE VIOLATIONS
Israel has repeatedly carried out strikes in Gaza since a US-mediated ceasefire with Hamas was reached last October, saying it is targeting militants who threaten its forces or who took part in the October 2023 attack on Israel.
Hamas has accused Israel of violating the ceasefire. Nikolay Mladenov, US President Donald Trump’s appointed Board of Peace envoy to Gaza, has said both sides have violated the agreement. Since the ceasefire took effect eight months ago, more than 1,070 Palestinians, many of them civilians, and four Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza, according to figures released by the two sides. Hamas does not disclose the number of its fighters killed.
Israeli troops control more than 60 percent of Gaza, patrolling what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu describes as a buffer zone to deter Hamas attacks. Netanyahu says Israel will not withdraw from the territory.
Israel’s devastating aerial and ground bombardment of Gaza displaced nearly the entire population of 2 million people, most of whom now live in tents or damaged buildings in a narrow coastal strip of territory governed by Hamas. Hamas-led fighters killed 1,200 people during their cross-border attack into Israel on October 7, 2023, according to Israeli tallies. The Gaza health ministry said more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory since then.
