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Hamas’ health ministry says at least 25 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.
An attack on a religious endowment ministry building in the Zeitoun neighborhood in eastern Gaza City killed 10 people, including a woman and a young girl, rescuers said.
The Israeli military said gunmen violated a five-week-old ceasefire agreement and opened fire on an area where Israeli soldiers were operating in the southern city of Khan Younis, later saying they had attacked “Hamas terrorist targets.”
Hamas had no immediate comment.
The violence erupted after the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution backing U.S. President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan to end two years of devastating war.
Mahmoud Bassal, spokesman for Gaza’s Hamas civil defense agency, told the BBC that Israeli airstrikes, drones and artillery struck several locations in Gaza City and Khan Younis shortly after sunset on Wednesday.
He said the attacks escalated dramatically after several days of relative calm.
The Civil Protection Ministry reported that Zeitoun’s strike caused severe damage to the Ministry of Religious Endowments’ building and surrounding structures, and released a video showing rescuers appearing to find two people buried under the rubble.
Meanwhile, photos released by Anadolu news agency showed the bodies of three young children reportedly recovered from the scene.
Bashar said that in another incident in Gaza City, a drone attacked a group of people at the Shedjaya intersection of Saladin Street, Gaza’s main north-south road, killing one person and injuring many others.
He said another person was killed when a tank shell hit the house of the Balbol family on Shejaya Mushtaha Street in eastern Gaza City.
In Khan Younis, an attack on a group of people at a sports club run by the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unrwa) left three people dead and many others injured, he added.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that early on Wednesday, “several terrorists opened fire on an area where IDF soldiers were conducting operations in Khan Younis.”
“This action violated the ceasefire agreement. No injuries to the IDF were reported,” the statement added. “In response, the IDF began attacking Hamas terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip.”
Israel’s public broadcaster Kan cited security sources as saying the attack targeted the commander of the Zeitoun battalion of Hamas’ military wing, the “Izzedin Al-Qassam Brigade”, and its naval commander.
On Monday, the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution aimed at cementing the fragile ceasefire, which takes effect on October 10.
Member states authorized the creation of a transitional governance body called the Peace Council, chaired by President Trump, and authorized the creation of the Interim International Stabilization Force (ISF), whose mission is to ensure “the process of demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.”
Trump hailed the resolution as “a truly historic moment.”
A Hamas statement reiterated that the group would not give up its weapons without a Palestinian state and claimed that its fight against Israel was legitimate “resistance.”
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations stressed the importance of disarmament and said Israel would not “stop or relent” until Hamas no longer posed a “threat.”
On October 7, 2023, the Israeli military launched an offensive in Gaza after a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel killed approximately 1,200 people and took another 251 people hostage.
Since then, Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed at least 69,500 people, including 280 during the ceasefire, according to the Hamas-controlled territory’s health ministry.
