Gaza civil defence says Israeli strikes kill seven

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Gaza’s civil defence rescue service said on Saturday that Israeli airstrikes in the Palestinian territory had killed seven people overnight, despite the fragile ceasefire in place since October last year.

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Mahmoud Bassal, spokesman for the group, which operates under the authority of the Islamist movement Hamas, said an Israeli drone had fired two missiles close to a police post in the Al-Bureij refugee camp.

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In addition to the seven dead, he said, several more people were wounded, four of them critically.

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The al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza said it had received six bodies and seven wounded, “including four in a critical condition because of direct impacts to the face, torso and other parts of the body”.

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The nearby al-Awda hospital said it had received one fatality and two wounded.

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Reached for comment by AFP, the Israeli military said it was working to verify the information.

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Israel and Hamas regularly accuse each other of violating the ceasefire that came into effect on October 10, after two years of war triggered by the Palestinian movement’s 2023 cross-border attack.

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At least 738 Palestinians have been killed since the truce began, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.

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The Israeli army has reported five soldiers killed since the start of the truce.

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Under the restrictions imposed on the media in Gaza and the difficulties of accessing the field — the international press is still barred by the Israeli authorities from entering — AFP is not in a position to independently verify the information provided by the different parties.

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