Gaza civil defence says Israeli strikes kill 12
Gaza's civil defence agency reported that Israeli strikes killed at least 12 people since dawn on Sunday, while a military official said the attacks were in response to ceasefire violations. Despite a US-brokered truce that entered its second phase last month, violence has continued in the Palestinian territory, with Israel and Hamas blaming each other for violating the agreement. The civil defence agency, which operates as a rescue force under Hamas authorities, said one strike hit a tent of displaced people in northern Gaza and another targeted an area in the south.
Five people were killed and several injured when an air strike targeted a tent sheltering displaced people in Jabalia in the north, the agency said in a statement. Five more were killed and several injured in a separate early morning strike in the southern city of Khan Yunis, the agency said, adding that one more was killed in Israeli shelling in Gaza City.
It also said Israeli gunfire killed one person in Beit Lahia in north Gaza. The Al-Shifa and Nasser hospitals confirmed receiving at least seven bodies. "Israel doesn't understand ceasefires or truces," said Osama Abu Askar, who lost his nephew in the Jabalia attack. He said the people were killed as they slept. - Funeral prayers - "We've been living under a truce for months, and they've still targeted us. Israel operates on this principle -- saying one thing and doing another," Askar told AFP.
Dozens of relatives and mourners gathered at Nasser Hospital, where the bodies of some of those killed were laid out in white shrouds. Men and women prayed before the funeral, facing the corpses in the hospital compound. A military official said Israel attacked in response to Hamas violations of the ceasefire. "The violation included an identification of several armed terrorists who took cover under debris east of the yellow line and adjacent to IDF troops, likely after exiting underground infrastructure in the area," the official said. "Crossing the yellow line in the vicinity of IDF troops, while armed, is an explicit ceasefire violation, and demonstrates how Hamas systematically violates the ceasefire agreement with intent to harm the troops."
Under the terms of the ceasefire, which took effect on October 10, Israeli troops withdrew to behind a so-called "Yellow Line", although they still control more than half of the Palestinian territory. Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem in a statement on Sunday accused the Israeli military of violating the ceasefire. "Targeting of displaced people in their tents is a serious violation of the ceasefire agreement," Qassem said. Gaza's health ministry, which operates under Hamas authorities, says at least 601 people have been killed since the truce began.
Israel says at least four of its soldiers have been killed in the same period. - Media restrictions - Media restrictions and limited access to Gaza have prevented AFP and other news organisations from independently verifying casualty figures or freely covering the fighting. International medical charity Doctors Without Borders, meanwhile, said it had suspended its "non-critical" work at Nasser Hospital after staff reported seeing gunmen there and weapons being moved.
"We don't know who these armed men are or if they belong to any group," MSF told AFP. During the war, the Israeli military accused Hamas of using hospitals as command centres to attack its forces. "The obvious question is: where was MSF until now?" COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body for Palestinian civilian affairs, wrote on X. "If MSF now acknowledges Hamas's deep presence in a hospital they work in, why has it repeatedly refused basic transparency -- such as submitting staff lists -- to ensure its organisation has not been infiltrated by Hamas operatives?" Israel has said it will terminate all MSF activities in Gaza and the occupied West Bank from March 1 after the charity did not provide names of its Palestinian staff. MSF says it did not do so because Israel failed to give assurances the staff would be safe.
