Civil Defense announces 14 killed in Israeli military operations

Gaza Strip Civil Defense announced on Sunday that 14 people were killed, including three children, in strikes or shootings by the Israeli military across the small Palestinian territory ravaged by more than 20 months of war.

At least 14 deaths and dozens of injuries were transported to hospitals following Israeli army shootings and airstrikes, Mahmoud Bassal, spokesman for this first aid organization, told AFP.

Due to the restrictions imposed on the media in the Gaza Strip and difficulties accessing the field, AFP cannot independently verify the tolls and claims of Civil Defense.

Bassal detailed four airstrikes, which he attributed to drones or fighter jets, resulting in 13 deaths: five northeast of Gaza City (north), two children in Gaza City, one woman in a house in Khan Younes (south), and five people, including a child and two women, in a tent sheltering displaced people in al-Mawasi (south).

“Two children from the Azzam family fell as martyrs and several people were injured during an Israeli raid carried out at dawn [around 4 a.m., 1 a.m. GMT] on a house [...] in the southeast of Gaza City,” Bassal specified. “We heard a huge explosion,” Abdel Rahman Azzam, a family relative living in the same neighborhood, told AFP, “the cries of children and women were unending. They bombed the house with a missile without any prior warning.”

An 18-year-old man was also killed by Israeli gunfire while waiting for a food distribution in the al-Alam sector (south), according to Bassal. On Sunday, the army issued a call to evacuate for residents of several neighborhoods in northern Gaza Strip, where it says it is conducting “extremely forceful” operations against the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.

When asked by AFP about the events reported by Bassal, the Israeli army said it could not comment on them and reiterated that it is conducting operations against Hamas.

After the cease-fire that went into effect with Iran on Tuesday, the army said it was “refocusing on Gaza, to bring the hostages home and dismantle the Hamas regime.” The war was triggered by the unprecedented Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. The attack resulted in the death of 1,219 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to AFP's count based on official data, and 49 people taken hostage that day are still held in Gaza, 27 of whom are declared dead by the Israeli army.

More than 56,412 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed in the Israeli retaliatory campaign on the Gaza Strip, according to data from the Health Ministry of the Hamas government for Gaza, considered reliable by the U.N.