Key takeaways:
- Palestinian officials reported at least seven deaths in an Israeli strike on a police post in Jabalia; Al Jazeera reported at least eight were killed.
- Gaza’s interior ministry said Col. Mohammed Marwan Salem, the local police station chief, was among those killed.
- Gaza’s health ministry says at least 1,110 people have been killed by Israeli fire since the October ceasefire took effect, while Israel says four soldiers have been killed in Palestinian attacks.
An Israeli drone strike hit a Hamas-run police post near a busy market in northern Gaza on Tuesday, killing at least seven people, including a senior police officer, Palestinian officials said, in one of the latest deadly incidents reported despite a ceasefire in the territory.
Witnesses told the BBC that an Israeli drone fired four missiles at the post in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza. Gaza’s Hamas-run interior ministry said Col. Mohammed Marwan Salem, the head of the local police station, was among those killed, along with several other officers. The ministry condemned the strike as a “massacre.”
Reports differed on the death toll. The BBC cited health and police officials saying at least seven people were killed. Al Jazeera, citing local officials, reported that at least eight people were killed in the attack in al-Faluja in western Jabalia, including at least six police personnel, the station’s director and a civilian. It said AFP cited Gaza’s Palestinian Civil Defence as saying eight bodies, including that of a female officer, were taken to al-Shifa Hospital.
An Israeli military official confirmed to the BBC that Israel had carried out a strike in the area and said it had targeted “terrorists.”
Al Jazeera’s correspondent Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said the officers had been working in a marketplace area in the middle of a displacement camp. “Their job was to maintain some sort of law and order and organisation,” he said.
Other deadly incidents were reported in southern Gaza on Tuesday. Medics told Reuters that an Israeli air strike killed a man and injured three others in the Khan Younis area. The Israeli military said it struck a Hamas operative. Al Jazeera, citing the Palestinian Wafa news agency, reported that the wounded included a child and a woman.
In a separate incident, a 10-year-old boy, named by medics as Muataz Abu Shaar, was killed by Israeli gunfire, according to the BBC. The BBC reported the shooting happened in nearby Rafah, while Al Jazeera, citing Wafa and its correspondent, reported that a 10-year-old child was killed by heavy machine-gun fire in Khan Younis’s al-Mawasi area and died before relatives could get him to Nasser Hospital. The Israeli military had not commented on that incident, the BBC reported.
Al Jazeera, citing Wafa, also reported that another man died Tuesday from wounds sustained in Israeli gunfire two days earlier in Khan Younis. It said the day’s total death toll in Gaza was 11.
Israel and Hamas have accused each other of near-daily violations of the ceasefire that took effect in Gaza last October. Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says at least 1,110 people have been killed by Israeli fire since then, while the Israeli military says four of its soldiers have been killed in Palestinian attacks.
The war began after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage. Israel responded with a military campaign in Gaza. Gaza’s health ministry says more than 73,230 people have been killed in the territory since the start of the war. Al Jazeera cited a ministry statement Tuesday saying at least 73,233 people had been killed and 173,707 injured.
Be First to Comment