Gaza City: An Israeli strike in Gaza on Thursday killed a family of four including two children, Palestinian hospital and security sources said, while the Israeli army said it targeted a “military operative”.
“The bodies of four members of the Ahmad family were recovered in pieces after an Israeli strike hit a house in the Beit Lahia Project area in the northern Gaza Strip,” an official at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City said, identifying the children as aged 12 and eight.
“The strike eliminated Muamen Abd al-Rahman Ahmad, a military operative who had taken a direct part in combat against IDF troops… in violation of the ceasefire,” the Israeli military said.
A source in Gaza’s security forces, which operate under Hamas authority, said that Israeli warplanes struck after midnight in Beit Lahia and separately in the heart of the Jabalia refugee camp, with Israeli forces also firing on tents of displaced people and ambulances.
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“Israel continues its violations in the Gaza Strip,” the security source said.
Meanwhile, five people were killed on Thursday in three other Israeli strikes in the southern Gaza Strip, bringing the death toll for the day to nine, the territory’s civil defence agency told AFP.
Three of them were killed in a drone strike near Khan Yunis, according to the same source.
Israel in October last year agreed to a ceasefire brokered by the United States but since then has advanced further into Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed no let-up in strikes targeting Hamas, which led the unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack against Israel, and no pullout from Gaza until Hamas gives up all of its weapons.
Israeli strikes have killed more than 1,300 people since the ceasefire was announced, according to the Gaza health ministry, which operates under Hamas and whose figures are considered generally reliable by the United Nations.
The Israeli army has identified five deaths in its ranks over the same period, as well as the death of one civilian contractor.
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