DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Israeli army launched airstrikes on Saturday against Hamas militants in Gaza during the last test of the ceasefire It began on October 10, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said five senior Hamas officials had been killed. Health officials in Gaza reported at least 24 people killed and 54 others injured, including children.
The strikes, which Israel said were a response to shootings at its troops, came after international momentum on Gaza, with the UN Security Council on Monday. approving the United States plan to secure and govern the territory. It authorizes an international stabilization force to provide security, approves a transition authority overseen by President Donald Trump and considers a possible future path to an independent Palestinian state.
Israel has previously carried out waves of similar strikes after reported attacks on its forces during the ceasefire. At least 33 Palestinians were killed in a 12 hour period Wednesday and Thursday, mostly women and children, health officials said.
“A fragile ceasefire”
One of Saturday’s strikes targeted a vehicle, killing 11 Palestinians and injuring more than 20 in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, said Rami Mhanna, director general of Shifa Hospital, where the wounded were taken. The majority of the injured were children, director Mohamed Abu Selmiya said.
Associated Press video showed children and others inspecting the blackened vehicle, which had its roof torn off.
A strike targeting a house near Al-Awda hospital in central Gaza killed at least three people and injured 11 others, according to the hospital. According to the statement, a strike on a house in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza killed at least seven people, including a child, and injured 16 others.
Another strike, targeting a house in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, killed three people, including a woman, according to Al-Aqsa Hospital.
“Suddenly I heard a loud explosion. I looked outside and saw smoke covering the whole area. I didn’t see anything. I covered my ears and started shouting to others in the tent to run,” Khalil Abu Hatab said in Deir al-Balah. “When I looked again, I realized the upper floor of my neighbor’s house was gone.”
He added: “This is a fragile ceasefire. This is not a life we can live. There is no safe place.”
The Israeli military said in a statement it launched attacks against Hamas after an “armed terrorist” entered an Israeli-controlled area and fired on troops in southern Gaza. No soldiers were injured. The military said the person had taken a route through which humanitarian aid enters the territory, and called it an “extreme violation” of the ceasefire.
In other statements, the army said soldiers killed 11 “terrorists” in the Rafah area and arrested six others who were trying to flee an underground structure. He also said his forces killed two other people who crossed into the Israeli-controlled area in northern Gaza and advanced toward the soldiers.
Israeli forces remain in just over half of Gaza after withdrawing from some areas covered by the ceasefire.
A senior Hamas politburo official, Izzat al-Rishq, in a statement accused Israel of “manufacturing pretexts to escape the (ceasefire) agreement and return to the war of extermination” and said Hamas had urged the United States and other mediators to force Israel to implement the agreement.
The Hamas statement did not comment on Netanyahu’s office’s claim that five senior officials were killed.
The toll of the war
The war began with the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed some 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages. Almost all of the hostages or their remains have been returned under ceasefires or other agreements. The remains of three are still in Gaza.
Israelis rallied again Saturday evening in Tel Aviv, demanding a state commission of inquiry into events surrounding the October 7 attack.
“The Israeli government has failed in its most important mission: to protect its children, to protect its citizens, not to abandon soldiers on the battlefield without relief and without assistance,” said Rafi Ben Shitrit, father of Staff Sgt. Shimon Alroy Ben Shitrit, killed in the attack.
Gaza’s health ministry says 69,733 Palestinians were killed and 170,863 injured in the Israeli retaliatory offensive. The toll rose during the ceasefire, both due to new Israeli strikes and the recovery and identification of the bodies of those killed earlier in the war.
The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its figures, but has said women and children make up the majority of those killed. The ministry, part of the Hamas-led government and staffed by medical professionals, keeps detailed records considered generally reliable by independent experts.
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