Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence agency, told the BBC that Israeli air, drone and artillery strikes hit several locations in Gaza City and Khan Younis shortly after sunset on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The attacks marked a sharp escalation after several days of relative calm, he said.<\/p>\n
The Civil Defence reported that the strike in Zeitoun caused severe damage to the religious endowments ministry’s building and surrounding structures, and posted a video showing its rescue workers appearing to find two people buried under rubble.<\/p>\n
Photos published by the Anadolu news agency meanwhile showed the bodies of three young children reportedly recovered from the scene.<\/p>\n
In a separate incident in Gaza City, one person was killed and several others were wounded when a drone struck a group of people at Shejaiya junction on Salah al-Din Street, Gaza’s main north-south road, according to Mr Bassal.<\/p>\n
He said another person was killed when a tank shell struck a house belonging to the Balboul family in Shejaiya’s Mushtaha Street, which is also in eastern Gaza City.<\/p>\n
In Khan Younis, three people were killed and a number were wounded in a strike on a group inside a sports club run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), he added.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that “several terrorists opened fire toward the area where IDF soldiers are operating in Khan Younis” earlier on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“This action constitutes a violation of the ceasefire agreement. No IDF injuries were reported,” it added. “In response, the IDF began striking Hamas terrorist targets across the Gaza Strip.”<\/p>\n
Israeli public broadcaster Kan cited a security source as saying the targets of the strikes were the commander of the Zeitoun Battalion of Hamas’s military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and the commander of its naval force.<\/p>\n
On Monday, the UN Security Council passed a resolution that sought to shore up the fragile ceasefire, which took effect on 10 October.<\/p>\n
Member states authorised the creation of a transitional governance body called the Board of Peace, which will be chaired by President Trump, and a temporary International Stabilisation Force (ISF), which will be tasked with ensuring “the process of demilitarizing the Gaza Strip”.<\/p>\n
Trump hailed the resolution as “a moment of true historic proportion”.<\/p>\n
A Hamas statement reiterated that the group would not give up its weapons without a Palestinian state, arguing its fight against Israel was legitimate “resistance”.<\/p>\n
Israel’s ambassador to the UN stressed the importance of disarmament, saying that his country would “not stop or let up” until Hamas no longer presented “a threat”.<\/p>\n
The Israeli military launched an offensive in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.<\/p>\n
At least 69,500 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, including 280 during the ceasefire, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for Gaza’s Hamas-run Civil Defence agency, told the BBC that Israeli air, drone and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-581561","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115579485143237111","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}