Israeli strikes in Gaza City on Saturday killed at least nine Palestinians, including three children, according to hospital officials. Two separate strikes targeted residential neighborhoods in the northern enclave, with the deadliest strike hitting an apartment building in the Nasr neighborhood.
Mohammed Abu Selmiya, director of Shifa Hospital where the bodies were brought, said a strike on an apartment in the Nasr neighborhood killed at least five people, including children aged 8 to 18. Six other people were wounded in that strike, he said, including four children between the ages of 8 and 16. Israel’s military said it targeted Hamas infrastructure and had located Hamas militants in the area, without providing further details.
Another Israeli strike hit a group of people in the nearby Zeitoun neighborhood, killing four and wounding another critically, health officials reported. The Israeli military said it targeted a “Hamas terrorist” and stated it was looking into the results of the strike.
The Saturday strikes came as Palestinians reported an increase in the scale of Israeli military operations across the Gaza Strip over the past several days. Despite a ceasefire agreement reached in October between Israel and Hamas, Israel continues to carry out near-daily attacks across the territory. Israel says it is targeting Hamas and other militants who pose a threat, though civilian casualties have resulted from numerous strikes.
Hamas and Israel have traded accusations of violating the ceasefire accord. Since the ceasefire took effect in October, at least 1,127 Palestinians, including at least 260 children, have been killed, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Five Israeli soldiers have been killed in that same period.
The latest deaths are part of a broader toll from nearly three years of conflict. The October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas-led militants that sparked the war killed around 1,200 people in Israel and saw 251 others taken hostage. Israel’s subsequent retaliatory offensive has killed 73,250 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry is part of the Hamas-led government and is staffed by medical professionals whose casualty records are viewed as generally reliable by United Nations agencies and independent experts. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and militants but says women and children make up roughly half of all deaths.
The strikes reflect the precarious situation on the ground in Gaza, where the fragile ceasefire has been frequently violated. Israel’s recent military operations have expanded into areas beyond what is known as the “Yellow Line,” the boundary its forces are meant to maintain under the ceasefire agreement. The expansion has increasingly fragmented the territory, making movement between areas more difficult for Palestinians.
The continuation of military operations despite the ceasefire underscores the deeper tensions between Israel and Hamas that persist even as major combat operations have largely paused. Both sides have blamed the other for violations of the truce, and diplomatic efforts to achieve a more permanent resolution remain uncertain.