Jomaa Younis and Mohammad Sio
08 October 2025•Update: 08 October 2025
ISTANBUL
The Israeli army killed 118 Palestinians over the past four days in air and artillery strikes across the Gaza Strip, defying a call by US President Donald Trump to halt the bombardments, the Gaza Government Media Office said Tuesday.
Israeli forces “continue their aggression against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, disregarding the ceasefire call announced by President Donald Trump and the positive response to his proposal,” the office said in a statement.
It said that between dawn on Saturday, Oct. 4 and the end of Tuesday, Oct. 7, Israel carried out more than 230 air and artillery strikes targeting densely populated civilian and displacement areas across Gaza’s governorates, committing “clear massacres.”
Among the 118 civilians killed in the strikes were women and children, with 72 fatalities reported in Gaza City alone, according to the statement.
It held Israel fully responsible for the attacks and urged the US administration and the international community to “take serious, effective and urgent action to stop the aggression and to establish a real ceasefire.”
Trump on Saturday urged Israel to halt its bombardment of Gaza immediately following a positive response from the Palestinian group Hamas to his 20-point ceasefire proposal.
On Sunday evening, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that weekend ceasefire talks had been “positive” and were “proceeding rapidly.”
Israel and Hamas resumed indirect negotiations Monday in the Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, mediated by Egypt and Qatar.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said earlier Tuesday that the talks aim to create conditions for a hostage-prisoner exchange and the unrestricted entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza. He added that they also seek to agree on maps for Israeli force redeployments as a prelude to a withdrawal from the territory.
Since October 2023, Israeli bombardments have killed more than 67,100 Palestinians in the enclave, most of them women and children, and rendered it uninhabitable.
