GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defence agency reported at least 12 people killed Monday in Israeli strikes across the Palestinian territory, where the war triggered by Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel entered its 19th month.
The latest strikes, part of renewed military operations after a two-month truce, come with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington for talks with US President Donald Trump later on Monday, where the ongoing fighting is set to be on the agenda.
An air strike hit a tent used by journalists in a makeshift displacement camp in the southern Gaza Strip, killing two people, said civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal.
The Hamas government media office said journalist Hilmi al-Faqaawi, who worked for a local news agency, was killed in the attack in the city of Khan Yunis.
Hamas fires rockets at Israeli cities, Israel issues evacuation orders in Gaza
Bassal said that nine others, all journalists, were wounded.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military did not immediately comment on the reported strike.
In central Gaza, Bassal said an Israeli air strike hit three houses in Deir el-Balah city and killed at least seven people.
“Some people remain trapped beneath the rubble,” the spokesman said.
Deir el-Balah was the subject of an Israeli evacuation order late Sunday, warning residents of imminent attacks in response to a rocket salvo that the military said was fired from the area.
Further north, Bassal said a strike hit “a group of civilians” in Gaza City’s Zeitun neighbourhood, killing three people.
The civil defence spokesman said there was also ongoing artillery shelling across Gaza and home demolitions in Rafah, on the territory’s southern border with Egypt.
Ahead of his Washington visit, Netanyahu said that discussions with Trump would address the Gaza war and efforts to secure the release of hostages.
Israel resumed intense strikes on Gaza on March 18, and the weeks-long ceasefire with Hamas that the United States, Egypt and Qatar had brokered collapsed.
Efforts to restore the truce have so far failed.
According to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, at least 1,391 Palestinians have been killed in the renewed Israeli operations, taking the overall death toll since the start of the war to 50,752.
