Israeli strikes, fires kill 7 Palestinians, including police officer, despite ceasefire in Gaza

GAZA CITY, Palestine

Israeli strikes and fires killed seven Palestinians, including a police officer, and wounded others on Friday in separate attacks across the Gaza Strip, despite a ceasefire that has been in effect since Oct. 10, medical sources said.

Three Palestinians were killed and others wounded during pre-dawn hours, coinciding with the suhoor -- pre-dawn meal before fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan -- on the 10th day of Ramadan, when an Israeli strike targeted a civilian gathering in the al-Mawasi area west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, medical sources told Anadolu.

In a statement, Gaza’s Interior Ministry and National Security said an Israeli strike targeted a police checkpoint on Salah al-Din Street at the entrance to the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, killing one police officer and seriously wounding another.

One more Palestinian man was killed by Israeli army fire near the Aslan area in the town of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza. Medical sources told Anadolu that Ahmed Saad Ghabn, 36, arrived at Al-Shifa Hospital with a gunshot wound to the abdomen and was later pronounced dead.

Separately, Eyad al-Attal, 37, was killed, while a woman and a child were wounded in an Israeli airstrike targeting a tent inside the Mustafa Hafez School near Nasser Hospital in central Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, the same sources said.

Another Palestinian was killed by Israeli fire in the al-Atatra area of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza.

All of the areas targeted lie outside zones under Israeli military control or deployment under the ceasefire agreement.

Since the agreement took effect, Israel has killed about 618 Palestinians and wounded 1,663 others in the daily ceasefire violations involving strikes and gunfire.

The ceasefire followed the genocidal war launched by Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, that lasted two years and killed more than 72,000 Palestinians and wounded over 171,000 others, most of them women and children, and destroyed about 90% of civilian infrastructure in the territory.

* Writing by Lina Altawell and Mohammad Sio in Istanbul.