Israeli strike kills family of six in Gaza City

An Israeli air strike killed a couple and their four children as they slept in Gaza City, local medics and health officials said, one of three attacks that Palestinian reports said left at least 12 people dead on Tuesday despite a ceasefire that took effect last October.

The strike hit the al-Masri family’s apartment in the Sabra neighbourhood of western Gaza City overnight. Video footage showed the home on fire as rescue workers tried to extinguish the flames and remove bodies wrapped in white shrouds.

Firas al-Masri, his wife, Salsabeel, and their children — daughters Faryal, Salma and Amira, and son Naim — were killed, according to family members and health officials. Firas al-Masri’s brother told the BBC the family had been burned to death.

Their father, Abu Yusuf al-Masri, told Reuters the explosion struck while the family was asleep.

“We were unable to save our grandchildren and children from the flames and the devastation. Around five or six were martyred, most of them children and women, without mercy and without any prior warning,” he said outside the house. “There is no relative calm, and there is no safe place at all.”

The Israeli military said it had targeted a Hamas operative and was still examining the results of the attack.

Later Tuesday, four people were killed in an Israeli air strike on a home in the al-Samar area of central Gaza City, Palestinian media cited medics as saying. Two others were killed in an Israeli drone strike on a vehicle in al-Zahra, south of Gaza City, the reports added. The Israeli military had not commented on those two strikes.

The Gaza Strip’s Hamas-run health ministry says at least 1,168 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect last October. Al Jazeera reported that the toll is more than 1,150 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Four Israeli soldiers have been killed in Palestinian attacks in Gaza over the same period, according to the BBC.

The United Nations human rights office condemned what it described as a recent intensification of Israeli military attacks in Gaza. Thameen Al-Kheetan, a spokesman for the office, said Tuesday that at least 57 Palestinians, including six children and eight women, were killed between July 13 and 20 in strikes on residential buildings, a tent camp for displaced families and other crowded areas. He said those figures did not include the al-Masri family.

“Nine months after the announcement of a ceasefire, still, nowhere is safe for Palestinians in Gaza,” Al-Kheetan said.

He said 34 of those killed were “far away” from the so-called Yellow Line, which marks territory in Gaza controlled by Israeli forces, and warned that the killing of civilians “raises concerns of continuing violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and other possible atrocity crimes in Gaza.” He added: “Under international law, deliberately attacking civilians is a war crime.”

The Israeli military has recently announced attacks targeting members of Palestinian armed groups it said were involved in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, when about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage. Israel responded with a large military campaign in Gaza, where more than 73,290 people have been killed, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Mediators including Egypt, Qatar, Turkiye and the United States have been trying to advance a U.S. plan to end the conflict that calls for Hamas’s disarmament and Israeli withdrawals, but Al Jazeera reported there has been little sign of progress.