Israeli strikes in Gaza killed at least 10 Palestinians on Thursday, local hospitals said, even as much of the world’s attention was focused on the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Nine people were killed in at least four separate strikes overnight in Gaza City, according to Shifa Hospital, which received the bodies. The hospital said the victims included two women and two children.
Another strike in Gaza City on Thursday evening killed at least one person and wounded another, according to Saraya Field Hospital, operated by the Red Crescent.
Footage of one of the strikes showed a massive hole in an upper floor in what appeared to be a residential apartment building. The blast blew holes through interior walls and scattered blood-stained belongings across the room and into the street.
“They say the war has stopped, but the war has not stopped,” said Walid Shbeir, the uncle of one of the men killed in the strikes, as relatives mourned the victims at Shifa Hospital. “Every night there is killing, and we have martyrs. Every night, in the morning, in the evening, and at night, this killing is continuous for us.”
Israel’s military claimed the overnight strikes in northern Gaza killed four militants, which it described as senior members of an apparatus responsible for protecting Hamas leaders and providing them with intelligence assessments. It was not clear what the evening strike was targeting, and the military didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on it.
Last week, Israel killed Hamas’s top military leader, two weeks after killing his predecessor.
The fatalities were the latest in the occupied Palestinian territory since an October ceasefire deal attempted to halt more than two years of fighting between Israel and Hamas.
The supposed ceasefire has been marked by almost daily Israeli attacks, however. Israeli forces have carried out repeated airstrikes and frequently opened fire on Palestinians since the truce took effect, killing 936 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
In response, Palestinian fighters have carried out attacks on Israeli troops. Four Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza during the supposed ceasefire.
Israel launched a war on Gaza in October 2023 after a Hamas attack killed 1,195 people, including 828 civilians, in southern Israel. The Israeli war has killed nearly 73,000 Palestinians so far, injured over 172,000, reduced most of the besieged territory to rubble, and driven the majority of its 2.2 million inhabitants from their homes.