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Hospital authorities in Gaza said Israeli airstrikes on Sunday killed at least 12 Palestinians, including two boys, a pregnant woman and eight police officers, as fighting continued to ripple through the enclave despite a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. The deaths were reported in two separate incidents, with bodies received at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital and Awda hospital in the central Gaza area, according to officials and hospital authorities.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said a strike Sunday morning hit a house in the urban refugee camp of Nuseirat in central Gaza, killing four people. The hospital said the fatalities included a couple in their 30s and their 10-year-old son. The hospital said the woman had been pregnant with twins.
The hospital said a 15-year-old neighbor from the same area was taken to Awda hospital in Nuseirat. In comments carried by the report, Mahmoud al-Muhtaseb, a neighbor, said, “We were sleeping and got up to the strike of a missile. The strike was strong,” and added that “There was no prior warning.”
Later Sunday, the Hamas-run Interior Ministry said another strike hit a police vehicle on the south-north Salah al-Din route at the entrance of the central town of Zawaida. The ministry said the strike killed eight police officers, including Col. Iyad Ab Yousef, described as a senior police official in central Gaza.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said it received the bodies from the incidents and confirmed the toll, while also reporting that 14 other people were wounded. Israeli military officials said they struck a Hamas militant on Sunday in response to an earlier incident in which a militant opened fire at troops, but the military did not provide further details.
The hospital and ministry figures were the latest fatalities reported among Palestinians in the coastal enclave since the ceasefire deal that attempted to halt a more than two-year war between Israel and Hamas. While the heaviest fighting has subsided, the ceasefire has still seen almost daily Israeli fire, with repeated airstrikes and frequent firing on Palestinians near military-held zones, according to Gaza health officials.
Israel has said it responds to violations of the ceasefire or targets wanted militants, while Gaza health officials have said more than 650 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire, with about half the deaths being women and children. The Gaza health ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government, maintains casualty records that U.N. agencies and independent experts have described as generally reliable, but it does not break down civilians and militants.
In the context of governance and security in Gaza, the Hamas-run police force has been described as maintaining a high degree of public security after Hamas seized power in 2007, while also cracking down on dissent. During the war, police largely withdrew as Israeli forces seized large areas of Gaza and targeted Hamas security forces with airstrikes, but the report said the police have reappeared in Gaza streets and reasserted control in areas not controlled by the Israeli military after an October ceasefire.
Separate from the strike reports, Israel said it would allow reopening of Gaza’s Rafah crossing with Egypt starting Wednesday after a more than two-week hiatus. Israel’s COGAT, the military body that coordinates aid to Gaza, said in a statement that the crossing would resume operations with “limited” passenger traffic in both directions, and that no cargo would be allowed through.
COGAT said procedures would be the same as before the crossing closed after Israel and the U.S. launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, an escalation that triggered a wider war in the region. Since the crossing opened earlier this year, Israel allowed limited evacuation of patients and wounded people for treatment outside Gaza—described in the report as a fraction of more than 20,000 medical evacuations that the Gaza Health Ministry said were needed. Some Palestinians who were treated in Egypt during the war were also allowed to return to the strip, with returnees reporting abuses by Israeli troops after they crossed the Palestinian gate of the crossing.