Gaza City witnessed renewed violence on Tuesday as Gaza’s civil defence agency confirmed that a toddler was among ten people killed in multiple Israeli airstrikes targeting the northern part of the Palestinian territory. This escalation comes despite a ceasefire that has been in place since October 10 during the ongoing Gaza conflict.
Mahmoud Bassal, spokesperson for the civil defence agency operating under Hamas authority, reported that four people, including a three-year-old child named Yahya al-Mallahi, lost their lives in an attack on a police vehicle in Gaza City. Several others were injured in the strike. The bodies of the deceased were received by Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.
Meanwhile, Gaza’s interior ministry issued a statement confirming that Israeli warplanes targeted a police vehicle in the city center, resulting in multiple casualties. Earlier on Tuesday, Bassal also reported the death of another individual due to Israeli fire in the northern Beit Lahia area.
The Israeli military stated that its forces had identified and killed an “armed terrorist” near the so-called Yellow Line, the boundary behind which Israeli troops have withdrawn. It remains unclear if this incident corresponds to the fatality reported in Beit Lahia. On Wednesday, the military further announced it had struck Hamas militants traveling in a truck the previous day.
Footage showed Palestinians gathering around the body of a man who was later carried on a stretcher through streets damaged by conflict, heading for burial. On Tuesday evening, the civil defence agency reported additional fatalities from an Israeli strike near an intersection in the Al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City. Al-Shifa hospital confirmed receiving five bodies from this bombing. The Israeli military has not yet commented on this latest attack.
The ceasefire that began in October followed over two years of intense conflict triggered by Hamas’s cross-border attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Since the truce took effect, at least 757 people have been killed in Gaza, the territory’s health ministry, whose data is regarded as reliable by the United Nations. During the same period, five Israeli soldiers have died in Gaza.
Restrictions on media access and limited freedom to operate within Gaza have hindered independent verification of casualty figures and comprehensive coverage of the ongoing hostilities.
