- The deaths include five women and four children
- Israeli air strikes and artillery shelling have continued relentlessly amid an impasse over a ceasefire deal
GAZA STRIP: Gaza rescuers and medics said Israeli air strikes killed at least 18 people across the Palestinian territory overnight, including five women and four children on Monday morning.
One of the Israeli strikes killed 10 in one house.
The 10 were killed and 15 others were injured when an air strike hit the home of the Al-Qassas family in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, a medic at Al-Awda hospital, where the bodies were brought, told AFP.
Gaza’s civil defense agency confirmed the death toll, with its spokesman Mahmud Bassal saying the strike took place on Monday morning.
The agency said six Palestinians were killed in a similar air strike during the night on a house belonging to the Bassal family in Gaza City’s Zeitun neighborhood, a regular target of Israeli military raids since the war began in October.
Two people were killed in another overnight air strike in Rafah that targeted a house belonging to the Abu Shaar family, the agency said.
Several people were also wounded in these strikes, medics and rescuers said.
Israeli air strikes and artillery shelling have continued relentlessly amid an impasse over a ceasefire deal to facilitate the release of remaining hostages in Gaza in exchange for an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons.
The war in Gaza erupted after the October 7 attack by Palestinian Hamas militants on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also seized 251 hostages, 97 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has so far killed at least 41,206 people in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, which does not provide a breakdown of civilian and militant deaths.
