An Israeli airstrike on a popular beachfront coffee shop in Gaza City on Monday afternoon killed more than two dozen Palestinians and injured dozens more, according to local medical workers.
Mohammad Abu Salmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, said that more than 30 people had been killed and more than 50 wounded in the strike at the cafe. Many of the injured are in critical condition, he said. The Gaza health ministry did not immediately provide an official death and injury toll.
The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment on the strike.
The beachside cafe that was struck, the Baqaa Cafe and Restaurant, overlooked the water and was a place Gazans went to escape the heat, use the internet, work, study or simply gather.
The strike came a day after the Israeli military issued evacuation warnings for parts of Gaza City and other areas in northern Gaza, signaling that it would intensify operations there.
A New York Times photographer who went to the scene of the seaside strike shortly afterward found that the cafe had been destroyed and was awash in the blood of the dead and the wounded. Tables and seating were smashed and strewn about from the blast, and the area was littered with personal effects.
“An airstrike carried out by the criminal occupation army’s aircraft targeted innocent civilians gathered at a rest stop on the Gaza City beach,” Hamas said in a statement. The militant group accused Israel of “a major escalation” in its bombing campaign across the enclave, but particularly in Gaza City.
Many residents of Gaza City and other areas in the northern part of the enclave fled their homes earlier in the war after previous evacuation warnings. But hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from the north returned home during a two-month cease-fire over the winter, with the truce expected to continue into another phase.
Instead, Israel resumed fighting in mid-March and at the same time imposed a blockade on humanitarian aid to Gaza that lasted until late May, compounding hunger and privation for the roughly two million residents of the enclave who have been repeatedly displaced throughout the war. The Israelis said that the goal was in part to force Hamas to release the remaining hostages seized in the militant attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel has been under pressure from President Trump to make a deal to end the fighting in Gaza, but indirect negotiations with Hamas have been at an impasse.
To end the war, Israel has demanded that Hamas surrender and disarm and that its leaders be sent to exile abroad, conditions that Hamas has repeatedly rejected. Hamas, for its part, says it will not agree to the return of about 50 remaining hostages, fewer than half of whom are believed to be alive.
The Hamas-led attack on Israel killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to the Israeli authorities. Israel’s counteroffensive has killed more than 56,000 people in Gaza, according to the Gaza health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians but has said more than half of the dead are women and children.
Aaron Boxerman and Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting.
Ephrat Livni is a Times reporter covering breaking news around the world. She is based in Washington.
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