Israeli airstrikes killed 32 people, including children, in Gaza on Saturday, the Palestinian territory’s civil defence agency said, as the military claimed it had attacked in response to a Hamas ceasefire violation.
Despite a US-brokered truce entering its second phase earlier this month, violence in Gaza has continued, with both Israel and Hamas accusing each other of breaching the agreement.
The latest bloodshed comes as Israel announced it would reopen the crucial Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt on Sunday for the “limited movement of people”.
“The death toll since dawn today has risen to 32, most of them children and women,” said the civil defence agency, a rescue force operating under Hamas, updating an earlier toll of 28.
“Residential apartments, tents, shelters and a police station were targeted,” agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal added.
A unit in an apartment building in Gaza City’s Rimal neighbourhood was completely destroyed, with blood spatters visible on the street below, an AFP journalist reported.
“Three girls died while they were sleeping. We found their bodies in the street,” said Samer al-Atbash, a relative of the family.
“What truce are you talking about? Everyone is deceiving everyone else,” added Nael al-Atbash, another relative.
One strike hit the police station in the Sheikh Radwan district of Gaza City, the territory’s largest urban centre. Gaza’s general police directorate said seven people were killed in that attack, while Bassal said the dead included four female police officers.
Ceasefire violations
About a dozen first responders rushed to the devastated building and pulled bodies from the rubble, an AFP journalist reported.
Another Israeli strike hit a shelter in Al-Mawasi, a southern Gaza area where tens of thousands of displaced people live in tents and makeshift shelters. Large plumes of smoke rose above the densely pitched tents, though the number of casualties was not immediately known.
Although people have been killed almost daily in Gaza since the ceasefire on 10 October, Saturday’s toll was particularly high.
Israel’s military said the air strikes were retaliation for an incident on Friday in which eight Palestinian fighters emerged from a tunnel in Rafah, in southern Gaza, in violation of the fragile ceasefire.
The military said forces “struck four commanders and additional terrorists from the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organisations across the Gaza Strip”.
Hamas political bureau member Suhail al-Hindi rejected the military’s claims. “What happened today is a fully fledged crime committed by a criminal enemy that does not abide by agreements or respect any commitments,” he told AFP.
Since the ceasefire came into effect, the Hamas-run health authority says Israeli strikes have killed at least 509 people in Gaza, while Israel reports four of its soldiers have been killed during the same period in suspected militant attacks.
Rafah reopening
Media restrictions and limited access in Gaza have made it impossible for AFP to independently verify casualty figures or cover the violence freely.
Egypt and Qatar, key mediators, condemned what they described as Israeli ceasefire violations. Egypt urged all parties to “exercise the utmost restraint” ahead of the Rafah crossing reopening, while Qatar denounced “repeated Israeli violations of the ceasefire”.
The Qatari foreign ministry said the violence was a “dangerous escalation that will inflame the situation and undermine regional and international efforts aimed at consolidating the truce”.
Israel has said the reopening of Rafah will allow only the “limited movement of people”. It is a key element of the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement.
Israel had previously refused to reopen the crossing until it received the remains of Ran Gvili, the last hostage held in Gaza, who was recovered earlier this week and buried in Israel on Wednesday.
The Gaza conflict was sparked by Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliation has devastated much of Gaza, already suffering from previous rounds of fighting and an Israeli blockade imposed since 2007. The two-year war has left at least 71,769 people dead in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.
