Israeli strikes kill at least 30 Palestinians, as Gaza closes in on advance

Hospitals in Gaza said Israeli strikes killed at least 30 Palestinians on Saturday – the highest toll since a ceasefire aimed at ending the fighting began in October.

A day after Israel accused the Palestinian militant group Hamas of violating a new ceasefire, strikes hit sites across Gaza, including deadly attacks on a building in Gaza City and a tent camp in Khan Younis, officials at hospitals that received the bodies said.

Among the dead are two women and six children from two different families. The airstrike also hit a police station in Gaza City, killing at least 14 people and injuring others, said the director of Al-Shifa Hospital, Dr. Mohamed Abu Salmiya.

The Israeli military said it was targeting commanders and areas belonging to Hamas and its ally, Islamic Jihad, in response to what it called violations of the US-backed law. Hamas, which still controls half of Gaza, said Israel had violated the agreement. It did not say whether any members or domains were affected by Saturday’s attack.

The video showed the charred, blackened and destroyed walls of an apartment in a multi-storey building, as well as debris strewn inside and outside the streets of Gaza City.

“We found my three nephews on the road. They said ceasefire and all, what did those children do, what did we do?” said Samer al-Atbash, a relative.

Saturday’s strikes are a reminder that the death toll in Gaza continues to rise as the ceasefire continues.

Nasser Hospital said the tent strike caused a fire that killed seven people, including a father, his three children and three grandchildren.

Meanwhile, Al-Shifa Hospital said that a strike on apartments in Gaza City killed three children, their aunt and their grandmother on Saturday morning, while a strike on a police station killed at least 14 police officers, including four female police officers and prisoners who were kept at the station. The Hamas-run Interior Ministry said Palestinian civilians were also killed in the strike.

The series of strikes also came a day before the Rafah border crossing with Egypt was to be opened in the southern Gaza city. All border crossings are closed for almost the entire war. Palestinians see Rafah as a lifeline for the tens of thousands who need treatment outside the area, where most of the medical infrastructure has been destroyed.

The opening of the crossing, limited at first, marks the first major step in the second phase of the US-brokered ceasefire. The reopening of the borders is among the most challenging issues on the party’s current agenda, including ending the war after nearly two decades of Hamas rule and installing a new government to oversee reconstruction.

Israeli fire has killed more than 500 people, most of them civilians, according to Gaza health officials, since a US-brokered deal between the Palestinian terror group Hamas and Israel went into effect in October after two years of war.

Palestinian militants have killed four Israeli soldiers since the truce, according to Israeli authorities.

On Friday, the Israeli army said its forces identified eight gunmen who came out of a tunnel in Rafah, south of Gaza. Three of them were killed and the fourth, who he described as a senior Hamas commander in the area, was arrested.

The two sides have traded truce violations, as Washington pressures them to move on to the next stages of a ceasefire agreement aimed at ending the war once and for all.

The next phase of US President Donald Trump’s agenda includes complex issues such as the disarmament of Hamas, which the group has long rejected, the continued Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the deployment of an international peacekeeping force.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that he will never agree to a Palestinian state, despite growing international support for it. (Canada joined the UK, France and Portugal in recognizing Palestine as a state in September.)