An Israeli strike killed at least seven people and injured a number of others in central Gaza on Friday, according to hospital officials, the latest in a surge in attacks in the territory.
The Israeli military said the strike targeted members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the second-biggest militant group in Gaza. The military, however, said it was aware of the claims that several “uninvolved individuals” had been harmed in the attack.
“The results of the strike are under review,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
Israel has intensified its strikes on Gaza in recent weeks, despite signing a U.S.-backed cease-fire deal with Hamas in October. Israeli officials have said the military has been targeting Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants who participated in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, which killed 1,200 people, saw 251 others taken captive and ignited the war in Gaza.
Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls the portion of Gaza where most of the population lives, called the strike on Friday an “ugly massacre” and said it targeted a funeral procession, without identifying whose funeral.
The Awdeh Hospital, which said it had received the victims, said seven people had been killed in the strike. Dr. Mohammed Salha, who works at the hospital, said an additional person had been killed in a separate incident on Friday.
Osama Hmaid, 39, a resident of Nuseirat, the area where the strike occurred, said Israel had carried out a number of strikes in his town in recent days.
Last month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Channel 14, a TV station, that Israel was killing all of those who took part in planning the October attack and any elite Hamas fighters that Israeli security forces find.
More than 1,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the October cease-fire, in addition to more than 73,000 killed during the war, according to the Gaza health ministry. Its toll does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
On Tuesday, an Israeli strike on a police post in northern Gaza killed six officers and personnel, including the director of the station, as well as one civilian, according to Hamas-run authorities in Gaza.
The Israeli military said the targets of the attack were “terrorists” belonging to Hamas’s military wing, adding that the people who were struck had gathered in recent months to plan attacks against Israelis.
Hamas described that attack as an escalation against the civil security apparatus in Gaza.
While the military has issued many announcements saying its strikes in Gaza have killed Hamas militants, interviews with medical officials in Gaza and hospital records indicate that Israel has also killed civilians in the nine months since the cease-fire.
The U.S.-brokered agreement led to the release of the remaining hostages, and left Israeli forces in control of more than half of Gaza. The Israeli military has since expanded its area of control, hemming about two million Palestinian residents into a gradually shrinking strip of land along the coast.
Under the Trump administration’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza, Hamas was required to lay down its weapons. Though the group has agreed to cede administrative control of the territory, it has so far refused to relinquish its arms.
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