Gaza civil defence says Israeli strikes kill seven

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.

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.

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

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”.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.