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Gaza hospitals said Israeli strikes killed at least 30 Palestinians on Saturday – one of the highest tolls since a ceasefire aimed at ending fighting took effect in October.
A day after Israel accused the Palestinian militant group Hamas of new ceasefire violations, strikes hit sites across the Gaza Strip, including deadly strikes on an apartment building in Gaza City and a tent camp in Khan Younis, officials at the hospitals that received the bodies said.
Among the victims are two women and six children from two different families. An airstrike also hit a police station in Gaza City, killing at least 14 people and injuring others, Al-Shifa Hospital director Dr. Mohamed Abu Salmiya said.
The Israeli military said it targeted commanders and sites belonging to Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad in response to what it called a violation of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire. Hamas, which controls just under half of Gaza, said Israel had violated the truce. It did not say whether any of its members or sites were hit in Saturday’s attacks.
The video showed the charred, blackened and destroyed walls of an apartment in a multi-story building, as well as debris scattered inside and outside on the street in Gaza City.
“We found my three little nieces in the street. They say ceasefire and everything, what did these children do, what did we do?” said Samer al-Atbash, a relative.
Saturday’s strikes are a reminder that the death toll in Gaza continues to rise even as the ceasefire agreement progresses.
Nasser Hospital said the attack on the tent camp caused a fire, killing seven people, including a father, his three children and three grandchildren.
Separately, Al-Shifa Hospital said the attack on an apartment building in Gaza City killed three children, their aunt and grandmother on Saturday morning, while the attack on the police station killed at least 14 police officers, including four female police officers, and detainees held at the station. The Hamas-run Interior Ministry said Palestinian civilians were also killed in the strike.
The series of strikes also came a day before the opening of the Rafah crossing along the border with Egypt in Gaza’s southernmost city. All of the territory’s border crossings were closed for most of the war. Palestinians view Rafah as a lifeline for the tens of thousands of people needing care outside the territory, where the majority of medical infrastructure has been destroyed.
The opening of the terminal, limited at first, marks the first major step in the second phase of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire. Reopening the borders is among the difficult issues on the agenda of the current phase, which also includes the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip after nearly two decades of Hamas rule and the installation of a new government to oversee reconstruction.
Israeli fire has killed more than 500 people, mostly civilians, according to Gaza health officials, since a U.S.-brokered truce between the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel took effect in October after two years of war.
Palestinian militants have killed four Israeli soldiers since the truce, according to Israeli authorities.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it had identified eight armed men emerging from a tunnel in Rafah, southern Gaza. Three of them were killed and a fourth, described as a key Hamas commander in the region, was arrested.
The two sides have traded blame for truce violations, even as Washington presses them to move on to the next phases of the ceasefire deal meant to end the war for good.
The next phase of US President Donald Trump’s plan includes complex issues such as disarming Hamas, which the group has long rejected, continuing the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and deploying an international peacekeeping force.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted he would never accept the creation of a Palestinian state, despite growing international support for it. (Canada joined the United Kingdom, France and Portugal in recognizing Palestine as a state. in September.)
