Israeli strike kills six Palestinians in Gaza, medics say

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

CAIRO, March 8 (Reuters) – An Israeli air strike and tank shelling killed six Palestinians, including two girls, in Gaza City on Sunday in two separate attacks, the deadliest incidents in Gaza since Israel and the U.S. launched their war against Iran a week ago, health officials said.

Mohamed Abu Selmia, the head of the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, said the three men were near Al-Azhar University in western Gaza City, and included a paramedic Mohammad Hamduna, and two others named as Mohammad Abu Shedeq and Ahmed Lafi. 

The strike hit near crowded tent camps where Gazans were sheltering, and wounded several other people, the medics added.

Such attacks have declined since the start of the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran, although Israeli forces have killed several Palestinians over the past week. 

The Israeli military issued a statement on Sunday about the strike saying they had killed two Hamas members who had been preparing to attack Israeli soldiers, without providing evidence.

No militant group has claimed any of the men as members.   

The Israeli military declined to comment in response to Reuters’ request for evidence connecting the men to a potential attack.

A little after midnight in the central Gaza Strip, Israeli tank shelling killed at least three people, including two girls, and wounded 10 other people, some of them children, according to health officials at Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat camp.

Medics said the tank shells hit a tent encampment, housing displaced families in the western Nuseirat area. Two years of war turned most of the enclave into a wasteland, and internally displaced most of the territory’s over two million population.

There was no immediate Israeli comment on the reported tank shelling incident.

Israel and Hamas agreed to a U.S.-brokered Gaza ceasefire deal that kicked off last October, but violence has continued on a near-daily basis. Both sides have blamed the other for the violation of the truce agreement.

The Gaza health ministry said at least 640 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since October. Israel says four soldiers have been killed by militants in Gaza over the same period. 

Gaza has been devastated by more than two years of an Israeli onslaught that killed over 72,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, and left much of the enclave in ruins. 

The war was sparked by Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, where the militants killed 1,200 people and took over 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi and Pesha Magid; Editing by Helen Popper, Alexandra Hudson and Stephen Coates)