The civil defence agency in the Gaza Strip and a hospital announced on Saturday that 11 people, among them a couple and three of their children, were killed in strikes by Israel's armed forces on the Palestinian enclave, despite the ceasefirethat came into force in October 2025.
The five members of the family lost their lives when a flat was hit in the northwestern part of Gaza City, the civil defence said. The agency is a first-response service belonging to the state apparatus of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.
The only member of the family to survive is "a child who was not in the flat at the moment of the strike", civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP. The Shifa Hospital confirmed it had received five bodies.
Israeli military response
A spokesperson for the Israeli armed forces said the strike launched on Gaza City targeted "a Hamas terrorist". The army is in the process of assessing the results of the operation, the same source added.
According to Musa al-Aymawi, a Gaza resident, the bombardment came without warning. "Suddenly, a missile struck the building. Nobody expected it," he said. "There were bodies everywhere, women, children dead, elderly people."
Video filmed by an AFP camera operator shows a large part of the building's facade destroyed, first-aid workers rushing to help the wounded and people searching through the rubble.
Further strikes across the enclave
Another three people were killed in an Israeli bombardment of a group of civilians in the Zeitoun district of Gaza, again according to the civil defence, a toll also confirmed by Shifa Hospital.
A few hours later, Bassal announced the death of a woman in the same district from Israeli "artillery fire" that struck "a tent housing displaced people". Several more people were wounded and another three are missing, the spokesman noted.
Health officials also reported two more people killed on Saturday in two further Israeli army strikes on the small coastal Palestinian territory. The Israeli army did not respond when asked to comment on the reports of these latest strikes.
Mounting toll since the truce
Israel and Hamas accuse each other virtually daily of violations of the ceasefire in the devastated enclave.
At least 1,144 Palestinians have lost their lives since the truce took effect on 10 October 2025, according to the health ministry of the Hamas government, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN. Over the same period, Israeli authorities officially count six losses in the enclave: five soldiers and a Defence Ministry contractor.
Source: AFP
