Gaza Rescuers Say 19 Killed In Israeli Strikes Overnight

AFP/APP

Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Tuesday that Israeli strikes overnight killed at least 19 people across the Palestinian territory, where Israel has resumed its offensive against Hamas.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that “19 civilians including several children were martyred” and dozens more wounded in the latest Israeli raids.

Five children and four adults were killed in a strike that hit a home in the central city of Deir el-Balah, while two separate pre-dawn attacks on Gaza City and Beit Lahia in the north left a total of 10 people dead, Bassal said.

Separately, a media outlet affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement, a Hamas ally, announced the death on Monday of an employee named Ahmed Mansur in an Israeli strike on a tent used by journalists in the Khan Yunis area.

The Hamas government media office had on Monday reported the death of journalist Hilmi al-Faqaawi, who worked for a local news agency, in the same strike, which also wounded another nine.

The Israeli military meanwhile said the strike had targeted “Hamas terrorist Hassan Abdel Fattah Mohammed Aslih”, claiming that he operated “under the guise of a journalist and owns a press company.”

It said Aslih had “infiltrated Israeli territory and participated in the murderous massacre carried out by the Hamas terrorist organisation” on October 7, 2023.

Israel resumed intense strikes on the Gaza Strip on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire with Hamas. Efforts to restore the truce have so far failed.

According to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, at least 1,391 Palestinians have been killed in the renewed Israeli operations, taking the overall death toll since the start of the war to 50,752.

Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.