CAIRO (Reuters) -At least 18 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza on Saturday, medics said, while the army said it was targeting fighters operating from aid shelters and warehouses.
At least 10 people died in a strike near the Deir Al-Balah municipality building in the central Gaza Strip, where people were gathering to receive aid, medics said.
The injured were transported on foot, by rickshaw and by car from the site of the attack to the hospital, doctors said. The strike killed the head of the Hamas-led administrative committee in the central Gaza Strip, a source within the organization said.
The Israeli army is examining this information, a spokesperson said. Earlier, Israeli warplanes struck militants and weapons caches near a humanitarian aid warehouse, the army said, after men fired rockets into Israel from there.
Another strike, in Gaza City, on a former shelter housing displaced people, targeted Hamas fighters, the army said. According to Palestinian doctors, at least seven people were killed in this attack, including a woman and her baby.
It is unclear whether the others killed were combatants. The military said it had taken precautions to reduce the risk of harm to civilians.
Another strike in Gaza City killed a local journalist, medics say. A spokesperson said the military was also reviewing that information.
The war in Gaza began after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 which left 1,200 dead, most of them civilians, with more than 250 hostages brought back to Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel then launched an air, sea and land offensive which left at least 44,000 dead, mainly civilians, according to the authorities of the Hamas-led Gaza Strip, but also displaced almost the entire population and left a large part of the enclave in ruins.
A new attempt by Egypt, Qatar and the United States to reach a truce has gained momentum in recent weeks.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi discussed with US officials on Saturday efforts to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza and a hostage-for-prisoner exchange in the Palestinian enclave, his office said.
(Reporting by Nidal Al Mughrabi, edited by Menna Alaa and Maayan Lubell, French version Benjamin Mallet)
