Israeli strikes kill at least 30 Palestinians, as Gaza ceasefire inches forward

Hospitals in Gaza said Israeli strikes killed at least 30 Palestinians on Saturday — one of the highest tolls since the ceasefire aimed at stopping the fighting went into effect in October.

A day after Israel accused Palestinian militant group Hamas of new ceasefire violations, strikes hit locations throughout Gaza, including lethal ones on an apartment building in Gaza City and a tent camp in Khan Younis, officials at hospitals that received the bodies said.

The casualties included two women and six children from two different families. An airstrike also hit a police station in Gaza City, killing at least 14 and wounding others, Al-Shifa Hospital director Dr. Mohamed Abu Salmiya said.

The Israeli military said it had targeted commanders and sites belonging to Hamas and its ally, Islamic Jihad, in response to what it called a breach of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire. Hamas, which retains control of just under half of Gaza, said Israel had violated the truce. It did not say whether any of its members or sites were struck in Saturday’s attacks.

Video showed charred, blackened and destroyed walls at an apartment in a multi-storey building, and debris scattered inside it and outside on the Gaza City street.

“We found my three little nieces in the street. They say 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 is still rising even as the ceasefire agreement inches forward.

Nasser Hospital said the strike on the tent camp caused a fire to break out, killing seven, including a father, his three children and three grandchildren.

Meanwhile, Al-Shifa Hospital said the Gaza City apartment building strike killed three children, their aunt and grandmother on Saturday morning, while the strike on the police station killed at least 14 officers, including four policewomen and inmates held 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 crossing along the border with Egypt is set to open in Gaza’s southernmost city. All of the territory’s border crossings have been closed throughout almost the entire war. Palestinians see Rafah as a lifeline for the tens of thousands in need of treatment outside the territory, where the majority of medical infrastructure has been destroyed.

The crossing’s opening, limited at first, marks the first major step in the second phase of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire. Reopening borders is among the challenging issues on the agenda for the phase now underway, which also include demilitarizing the strip 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 U.S.-brokered truce between Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel took 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 military said its forces identified eight gunmen emerging from a tunnel in Rafah, in southern Gaza. Three of them were killed and a fourth, whom it described as a key Hamas commander in the area, was arrested.

The two sides have traded blame over truce violations, even as Washington presses them to proceed to the next phases of the ceasefire deal meant to end the war for good.

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

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