Rescue teams announce 12 killed in Israeli strikes

The Palestinian Civil Defense reported Sunday that 12 people, including young children, were killed in Israeli air strikes since the beginning of the day, most of them in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

In the early hours, Israeli fighter jets targeted three tents sheltering dozens of displaced people, killing "eight individuals, including four children aged two to five and two women," a spokesperson for the Civil Defense in Gaza, Mahmoud Bassal, told AFP.

Footage captured by AFP shows rescuers, in darkness, evacuating bodies by ambulance, one in a white plastic bag and another in a blanket, as well as an injured infant.

A new Israeli strike on a "civilian vehicle" in western Khan Younis resulted in three deaths in the afternoon, according to Mr. Bassal.

One person also lost their life and three others were injured in an Israeli bombing on a "group of civilians" in Gaza City (north), he specified.

The Israeli military, which resumed its offensive against the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip on March 18 after a two-month truce, has not commented on these events.

The war in Gaza was triggered by the attack carried out on Oct. 7, 2023, by Hamas in southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data.

The Israeli retaliations have resulted in at least 52,829 deaths in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to data released Sunday by the Hamas Health Ministry, deemed reliable by the U.N.