Israeli tank shelling and airstrikes killed 23 Palestinians, including seven children, in Gaza on Wednesday, health officials said, the latest violence to undermine a truce in the enclave.
Among the dead was a medic who rushed to help victims of a strike in the southern city of Khan Younis and was then killed by a second attack on the same location, health officials said.
Other strikes hit Gaza City in the north, where health officials said a five-month-old boy was killed. The attacks come three days after Israel reopened Gaza’s main border crossing with Egypt, a major step in the U.S.-backed truce.
“While we were sleeping in our house, the tank shelled us and the shells hit our house, our children were martyred — my son was martyred, my brother’s son and daughter were martyred … we have nothing to do with anything, we are peaceful people,” said Abu Mohamed Habouch, speaking at a funeral for his family.
Tents in Mawasi, a coastal area near Khan Younis crowded with Gazans displaced by the conflict, had been ripped apart by the strikes. Nearly all of Gaza’s population of more than two million has been forced to flee their homes.
The Israeli military said it had launched the strikes in response to militants opening fire against Israeli troops operating near its armistice line with Hamas. A later statement said one of the strikes had targeted a senior Hamas commander.
Palestinians carry the body of a man who was killed in an Israeli military strike, during his funeral at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis on Wednesday. (Jehad Alshrafi/The Associated Press)
It said an Israeli soldier was severely injured by the militant fire, which it described as a violation of the ceasefire agreement.
Hamas said Israel’s action undermined efforts to stabilize the ceasefire. In a statement, the group called for “immediate international pressure to halt violations.”
Since the start of the ceasefire, Israeli fire has killed at least 530 people, most of them civilians, according to Gaza health officials. Palestinian militants have killed four Israeli soldiers in the same period, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel’s two-year offensive on the Gaza Strip killed more than 71,000 Palestinians, according to Gazan health authorities, displaced most of its population and left much of the strip in ruins.
The attack led by Hamas in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that triggered the war killed around 1,200 people in Israel, according to Israeli tallies. Several Canadian citizens were killed in those attacks.
Rafah border crossing confusion
Palestinian patients preparing to cross through the newly opened Rafah crossing to Egypt were told that Israel had postponed the passage of patients through the border. Since then, Palestinian health authorities said that the group of patients were on their way to the border.
The Israeli agency that controls access to Gaza, COGAT, said the Rafah crossing remained open, but it had not received necessary details from the World Health Organization to facilitate crossings. The WHO did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Huda Abu Abed, 60, a heart patient, gets off a bus at Nasser Hospital after 12 Palestinian returnees were allowed into Gaza from Egypt following the long-awaited reopening of the Rafah border crossing, on Tuesday. (Abdel Kareem Hana/The Associated Press)
An Egyptian security source told Reuters that Israel had cited security issues in the Rafah area as the reason for the temporary closure, but those had since been resolved and work had resumed at the border.
Reopening the crossing was one of the requirements under the October ceasefire that set out the first phase of U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to stop fighting between Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants.
Sixteen patients from Gaza and 40 of their escorts crossed into Egypt on Tuesday, Gazan medics told Reuters.
Potential ‘Board of Peace’ donors reticent
In January, Trump declared the start of the second phase of the ceasefire, where the sides would negotiate the shattered enclave’s future governance and reconstruction.
Key issues, like the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the over 50 per cent of Gaza they currently occupy and the disarmament of Hamas, remain unresolved.
The U.S. has yet to secure funding commitments for its Gaza reconstruction plan as potential donors voice concerns that disagreements over Hamas disarmament could lead Israel to resume full-scale war in the enclave, sources told Reuters.
Hamas laying down its weapons is a key requirement under Trump’s plan. It calls for Israel’s military to withdraw troops as Hamas disarms and for Gaza’s reconstruction to be overseen by a “Board of Peace” chaired by the U.S. president.
“Countries want to see the funding will go for reconstruction within demilitarized places, and not to throw the money into another war zone,” one of the sources said.
WATCH | Western countries shy away from Trump-initiated bloc:
Trump unveils his ‘Board of Peace,’ but few allies have joined
U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled his ‘Board for Peace’ in Davos, Switzerland, but so far, few Western allies have joined. Originally endorsed by the United Nations as part of a Gaza peace plan, its charter makes no mention of Gaza at all. Some critics are now accusing Trump of trying to set up his own rival UN.
Seven Western diplomats told Reuters that the funding holdup, which has not been previously reported, was also being driven by a demand by some potential donors for funds to be managed by the United Nations rather than the Board of Peace.
After a two-year Israeli assault that left most of Gaza in ruins and Hamas weakened, the group is still believed to possess rockets, which several Western intelligence sources estimate to number in the hundreds. It is also estimated to possess thousands of light weapons, including rifles.
The first phase of Trump’s plan left Hamas in control of a bit under half of Gaza, where the group polices streets and has re-established its hold. Israel accuses Hamas of planning or attempting to carry out attacks on its troops, prompting strikes that have killed hundreds.
Hamas has agreed to discuss disarmament with other Palestinian factions, but neither Washington nor regional mediators had presented the group with any detailed or concrete disarmament proposal, two Hamas officials told Reuters.