GAZA: Gaza’s civil defence agency said Saturday that an Israeli air strike hit a house in Gaza City where displaced Palestinians had taken refuge, killing 11 people, while Israel said it struck a Hamas fighter.
“We have recovered the bodies of 11 martyrs, including four children and three women, after an Israeli warplane hit a three-storey house of the Bustan family,” agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
He said that the house in the eastern Al-Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City was hit at around 1am local time on Saturday.
“Several families had taken refuge in the house targeted with a single missile without any prior warning,” Bassal said, adding that many others were wounded.
Bassal said rescuers were continuing to search for people still missing.
The Israeli military said its forces had carried out a strike in the area overnight.
“The Israel Defence Force (IDF) struck the commander of a Hamas cell in the area of Daraj Tuffah, who was involved in the planning and execution of terrorist activities against IDF troops and the state of Israel,” the military said in a statement to AFP.
“The IDF is aware of claims that several civilians were killed as a result of the strike.”
Bassal said Israeli forces carried out similar strikes in other parts of the Hamas-run territory overnight, killing at least 10 people.
Five people were killed in northwestern Gaza City when an air strike hit a group of people near Dar Al-Arqam school, he said.
Further south, three others were killed in a strike in the Al-Mawasi area, where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge, Bassal added.
The war in Gaza broke out after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 resulting in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Fighters also seized 251 captives during the attack, 97 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 41,182 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not provide breakdowns of civilian and fighter deaths.
