At least 22 Palestinians have been killed in a series of Israeli airstrikes across northern and central Gaza, in what Hamas officials say is a fresh “blatant breach” of the six-week-old ceasefire.
Gaza’s civil defence and Hamas-run medical authorities said five separate locations were hit on Saturday, including residential homes and a vehicle, with women, children and elderly people among the dead.
One strike targeted a car near Abbas junction in the densely populated Rimal district of Gaza City, killing several people and setting the vehicle ablaze, according to witnesses and hospital staff.
Further south, medics reported fatalities near a mosque in Deir al-Balah, while two houses were destroyed in Nuseirat refugee camp. Relatives said three members of the Abu Amouneh family died in one blast, and seven from the Abu Shawish family in another. Later in the day, another strike on a house in western Gaza City killed three more people, local officials said.
The Israeli military said the attacks were carried out in response to an incident earlier on Saturday, when it claimed an “armed terrorist” crossed the so-called “yellow line” — a demarcation separating Israeli-controlled zones from the rest of Gaza — and opened fire on soldiers. No Israeli casualties were reported. Hamas denied its fighters were involved.
In a statement, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas of “again violating the ceasefire” and said Israel had “eliminated five senior Hamas terrorists” in the strikes. It urged international mediators to “insist that Hamas fulfil its side of the ceasefire.”
Hamas, in turn, accused Israel of pushing the yellow line westward and using alleged border incidents as a pretext to resume broader military operations. The group warned that Israel was trying to impose “new facts on the ground” and called on mediators and the United States to act urgently to safeguard the truce.
Gaza’s health ministry says more than 310 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes since the ceasefire came into effect on 10 October, part of a US-brokered plan that reduced Israeli ground forces in the enclave but left air operations largely at Israel’s discretion.
The war began after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage. Since then, over 69,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israeli bombardment and ground operations, according to Gaza health officials, with entire neighbourhoods flattened and hundreds of thousands still displaced.
Saturday’s strikes deepened fears among Gaza’s residents that the “ceasefire” exists largely on paper. For families picking through rubble in Gaza City, Deir al-Balah and Nuseirat, the latest wave of attacks was another reminder, as one resident told local media, that “the violence never really ended.”
