GAZA: Five Palestinians, including a young girl, were killed Monday in Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, medical sources and first responders said.
Civil defence spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said a total of 13 people had been killed and about 60 wounded by Israeli fire and airstrikes in Gaza in the past 24 hours.
“We transported three martyrs, including a child, following an Israeli airstrike targeting a camp for displaced people in the Al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Yunis,” Bassal told AFP.
Israel’s military told AFP it was “not aware” of any military activity in that area on Monday.
Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis confirmed the three deaths.
“Their bodies were torn apart by direct hits from shrapnel from the Israeli missile,” the hospital said, adding that several wounded people, including a child and a woman, had also come in for treatment.
The hospital identified the deceased as Hossam al-Zamli, Tamer Abu Sneima, and Jouri al-Soufi, a young girl. The Gaza education ministry gave her age as seven.
Gaza’s civil defence said a fourth person was killed in an airstrike on a tent housing displaced Palestinians near Khan Yunis.
In Gaza City’s Rimal neighbourhood, a third airstrike killed one and injured three, according to the city’s Al-Shifa hospital.
A security source in Gaza told AFP that “several tanks and military vehicles, accompanied by a military bulldozer, advanced on Monday morning into the area west of the Yellow Line in the eastern part of Deir al-Balah”, in central Gaza.
After a US-brokered ceasefire took hold in Gaza in October 2025, the so-called Yellow Line was established to divide the areas under Israeli control — more than 60 percent of the territory — from those under Hamas control.
The military advance Monday coincided with “heavy gunfire by the occupation forces towards the eastern and northern areas” of Deir al-Balah, home to hundreds of displaced families, the source added.
Since the ceasefire began last year, more than 1,500 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry.
The war began on October 7, 2023, following an unprecedented attack by militant group Hamas on southern Israel that killed 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel responded with a massive military campaign that has destroyed much of Gaza and killed more than 74,500 people, according to the territory’s health ministry, which operates under Hamas and whose figures are considered accurate by the United Nations.
