10 said killed, including three children, in Israeli strikes in northern Gaza

Israeli strikes in Gaza City on Saturday killed at least ten Palestinians, including three children, according to hospital officials in the coastal enclave.

A strike on an apartment in the Nasr neighborhood killed at least five people, two adults and three children between the ages of 8 and 18, said Mohammed Abu Selmiya, director of Shifa Hospital, where the bodies were taken.

The victims were a family of five, according to the territory’s Hamas-linked civil defense agency, which operates as a rescue service. “The family’s only surviving member is one child, who was not inside the house at the time of the strike,” Mahmoud Bassal, spokesman for the agency, told AFP.

Six other people were wounded, including four children between the ages of 8 and 16, health officials said.

The Israeli military said it targeted Hamas infrastructure and had located Hamas operatives in the area, without elaborating.

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Another Israeli strike hit a group of people in the Zeitoun neighborhood, killing four and wounding another critically, health officials said.

The IDF said it targeted a Hamas operative and was looking into the results of the strike.

Health officials reported at least one other death elsewhere in the Strip.

IDF says two operatives killed Friday

Meanwhile, the IDF announced Saturday that it killed two Palestinian terror operatives in strikes the previous day.

One strike in central Gaza killed Imam Khamis Akasha Abu Brikh, identified by the IDF as a sniper operative in Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Brikh had acted to advance sniper attacks on Israeli troops in the Strip, the military said.

A separate strike in northern Gaza killed Muhammad Taysir Ahmad Ubeid, who, according to the IDF, served in Hamas’s operations division. Ubeid also tried to advance attacks on troops, the IDF said.

Both operatives had “posed an immediate threat” to Israeli forces in Gaza, the military said, and they were therefore targeted.

The IDF in recent months has ramped up strikes on terror operatives in Gaza, including numerous October 7 terrorists, insisting almost every time that they posed a threat to Israeli forces. But those strikes have also come with civilian casualties, including women, children and aid workers.

At least 1,100 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the ceasefire took effect in October last year, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. That toll is unverified and does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, though the Israeli military believes that Hamas’s overall figure is largely accurate.

Overall, Hamas says over 73,000 people in the Gaza Strip have been killed since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel sparked the war in the enclave. The IDF says it has killed over 23,000 combatants in Gaza and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas, including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.