Gaza Civil Defense said Thursday that at least 11 people, including the police chief of the Islamist movement Hamas, were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the south of the Palestinian territory.
Posted at 6:55 a.m.
The same source said that two other Israeli strikes elsewhere in the Palestinian territory resulted in the deaths of 14 Palestinians.
The Israeli military confirmed it carried out an overnight strike in the Khan Yunis area of the southern Gaza Strip, saying it targeted deputy police chief Hussam Shahwan over his alleged role in the planning attacks against Israeli troops.
“Eleven people were martyred, including three children and two women, and 15 were injured after the bombing of a tent sheltering displaced people in the Al-Mawasi area, west of the town of Khan Younes , in the south of the Gaza Strip,” Civil Defense said in a statement.
Among those killed were police chief Mahmoud Salah and his deputy, Hussam Shahwan, Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said.
“Defenseless civilians”
“Another reminder that there is no humanitarian zone, even less a “safe zone”” in Gaza, denounced on the social network X Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees ( Unrwa).
The Gaza Strip’s Interior Ministry, led by Hamas, also denounced the strike.
“By committing this assassination, the occupation continues to spread chaos in the Gaza Strip and aggravate the human suffering of citizens,” he said in a statement.
Hamas, for its part, said the strike was a continuation of Israel’s “genocidal war against defenseless civilians.”
A Gaza paramedic, Saleem Abou Soubha, described the scene: “We immediately went to the scene and found the injured lying on the ground, most of them children, as well as two female martyrs. Around ten tents were damaged,” he said.
On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened to intensify its strikes on Gaza if Hamas continued to fire rockets at Israel.
The resumption of rocket fire from Gaza into Israeli territory in recent days has caused little damage. The number of rockets fired is significantly lower than it was at the start of the war triggered on October 7, 2023 by an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israeli territory.
Elsewhere in the Gaza Strip, Civil Defense reported that a strike on Jabalia in the north left at least 10 dead.
“Summits of impunity”
The Israeli army, whose forces have been carrying out a large operation in northern Gaza since early October, has not commented on this strike.
Four other people died in another raid, according to Civil Defense.
The attack of October 7, 2023 resulted in the death of 1,208 people, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data and including hostages who died or were killed in captivity in Gaza.
During the attack, 251 people were kidnapped and taken to Palestinian territory.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday authorized Israeli negotiators to continue negotiations in Doha with a view to obtaining the release of the hostages, according to his office, in reference to the discussions being held under the mediation of Qatar, Egypt and of the United States.
At least 45,581 people were killed in the Gaza Strip in the Israeli military campaign in retaliation for the October 7 attack, the majority civilians, according to a latest report from the Gaza Health Ministry, whose data is judged reliable by the UN.
While the war has caused a humanitarian catastrophe in the Palestinian territory, two UN special rapporteurs said in a statement Thursday that attacks on the Palestinians’ “right to health” were reaching “peaks of impunity” after a Israeli raid on a hospital and the arrest of its director.
The Israeli representation to the UN in Geneva deemed the statement “very far from the truth”, adding that it “completely ignores” in particular “the use by Hamas of civilian infrastructure for military purposes”.
