The Hamas-run Palestinian health ministry reported on Thursday that 33 Palestinians, including 12 children and eight women, were killed and 88 wounded in the Gaza Strip over the previous 24 hours as a result of Israeli strikes, as both sides blamed each other for violating the ceasefire.
Air strikes killed five people and wounded 18 others in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Thursday, local health authorities said.
Medics said that one strike on a house in Bani Suhaila town east of Khan Younis killed three people, including a baby girl, and wounded 15 others, while another killed a man and wounded three others in the nearby Abassan town.
On Wednesday, Israel said it struck targets across the enclave after members of the Palestinian militant group fired on its troops, and Gaza medics said at least 25 people were killed
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The Israeli military said it also found an eight-tubed rocket launcher with four rockets aimed at Israel while clearing the area around the so-called yellow line demarcation which divides Gaza in two.
Hamas denounced what it said was a “dangerous escalation” by Israel that could jeopardise the ceasefire.
Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem accused Israel of changing the yellow line markings that define areas Israel still occupies, in violation of the agreed-upon maps, which keep Israel in control of more than 50 per cent of the enclave’s areas. He urged mediators to intervene.
Qatar, a key mediator in the Israel-Hamas war, condemned the Israeli air strikes, saying they threatened to upend the fragile weeks-long truce.
The flare-up of violence comes after the UN security council passed a resolution that endorsed US president Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan to end two years of devastating war.
Since the October 11th ceasefire, 312 Palestinians have been killed and 760 wounded in Gaza.
The war in Gaza began after Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and seized 251 hostages in an attack on southern Israel on October 7th, 2023. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 69,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, health officials in Gaza say.
More than 60 delegations met in Brussels on Thursday to discuss reconstruction, governance and security in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip and reforming the Palestinian Authority (PA).
France and Saudi Arabia chaired the meeting of Palestine Donors Group, focusing on reforms of the PA called for by the US peace plan.
Also on Thursday, Israeli human rights organisations petitioned the high court of justice to demand that Israel immediately resume the evacuation of patients from the Gaza Strip to receive medical treatment in hospitals in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The petitioners claim that some 16,500 people, many of whom are children or elderly, are in a life-threatening situation because the medical care they need is no longer available in the coastal enclave. – Additional reporting: Reuters
