GAZA CITY, April 15 — Gaza’s civil defence agency said yesterday that a toddler was among 10 people killed in separate Israeli strikes in the northern part of the Palestinian territory.
Violence continues despite a ceasefire in the Gaza war that came into effect on October 10, with both Israel and Hamas regularly accusing each other of violations.
Mahmoud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence agency, which operates as a rescue service under Hamas authority, said “four people were killed, including a child and several others were injured... in a strike targeting a police vehicle” in Gaza City.
He identified the child as three-year-old Yahya al-Mallahi.
Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital confirmed receiving the bodies of the dead.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army said it was looking into the details.
In a statement, Gaza’s interior ministry said Israeli warplanes had “targeted a police vehicle” in the city centre, “causing several deaths and injuries”.
Bassal also said another person had been killed by Israeli fire in the northern Beit Lahia area earlier on Tuesday.
The military said in a statement that its troops had identified an “armed terrorist” in the area of the so-called Yellow Line—behind which its forces have withdrawn—who approached their position.
The army said he was killed in a strike, but it was unclear whether it referred to the same incident in Beit Lahia.
AFP footage showed Palestinians gathering around the body of a man who was then placed on a stretcher and carried away to be buried through streets lined with rubble.
Later yesterday evening, the civil defence agency reported that multiple people were killed in another strike near an intersection in the Al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City.
The Al-Shifa hospital confirmed receiving five bodies from “an Israeli drone bombing with two missiles a group of citizens in front of warehouses for electricity generators” in Al-Shati.
The military did not offer an immediate response regarding the latest strike.
The October ceasefire followed more than two years of war triggered by the Palestinian Hamas movement’s October 7, 2023 cross-border attack on Israel.
At least 757 have been killed in Gaza since the truce came into effect, according to the territory’s health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.
The Israeli army says five of its soldiers have been killed in Gaza over the same period.
Media restrictions and limited access in Gaza have prevented AFP from independently verifying casualty figures or freely covering the fighting. — AFP
