Gaza’s civil defense agency on Sunday said that Israeli strikes killed at least 44 people as Israel’s prime minister vowed a “strong response” to a rare salvo of rockets fired from the Hamas-ruled territory.
Dozens of Palestinians have been killed almost daily since Israel resumed its military offensive in Gaza on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire that had brought relative calm to the territory.
“The death toll as a result of Israeli airstrikes since dawn today is at least 44, including 21 in Khan Yunis,” a city in the southern Gaza Strip, civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.
Photo: Reuters
One strike killed six people on al-Nakheel Street in the al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City, where a group had gathered near a bakery, Bassal said.
Three children were among the dead, he said.
A Hamas statement called the strike “a deliberate act of child killing” and a “confirmation of the sadistic and barbaric nature of the occupation and its fascist leaders.”
Footage captured thick plumes of smoke rising from central and northern Gaza as Israeli forces bombarded areas of the besieged Palestinian territory.
A ceasefire brokered by the US, Egypt and Qatar ended on March 18 as Israel resumed its offensive in response to the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.
Elsewhere, Israel said it had shot dead “one terrorist” in the West Bank for throwing rocks, with Palestinian officials claiming it was a 14-year-old boy with US citizenship.
Gaza has since endured a new wave of relentless strikes and artillery fire, with dozens of fatalities reported on a near-daily basis.
Efforts to revive the ceasefire and secure the release of the remaining hostages held in Gaza have so far failed.
The stalled efforts would be on the agenda during a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump in Washington yesterday.
Netanyahu ordered a “strong response,” his office said, after the Israeli military reported about 10 “projectiles” had been fired from Gaza within minutes of each other on Sunday. Most were intercepted.
The Israeli offensive since 2023 has severely weakened Hamas, but the army has recorded 10 other rockets fired at Israel over the past two weeks.
Israeli police said debris fell in Ashkelon, near the Gaza border, and paramedics said one man had been wounded.
“The prime minister instructed to deliver a strong response and approved the continuation of the intensified IDF [Israel Defense Forces] operations in Gaza against Hamas,” Netanyahu’s office said.
One Israeli strike on Sunday hit the home of the Abu Issa family in Deir el-Balah, killing women and children, witnesses said.
“There were no wanted individuals in the house — even the men were at the mosque,” said Mohammad al-Azaizeh, a resident. “They were all civilians — children, women and girls. A missile tore through every floor, flattening the house. It felt like a nuclear bomb had hit us.”
Footage from another strike late on Saturday in Gaza City showed scenes of devastation at a hospital, where men and women mourned bodies wrapped in white shrouds.
“We heard the explosion and rushed to check on the children,” said Umm Haytham al-Salakhi through tears, as she grieved a relative at al-Ahli hospital. “I kept calling out for all our children.”
One sobbing man cradled a relative’s body, as dozens gathered to perform funeral prayers before the victims were taken for burial.
“They struck unarmed civilians while they slept,” said another resident, Mohammad Rahmi, who also lost a relative in the bombing.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
ACCESS DISPUTE: The blast struck a house, and set cars and tractors alight, with the fires wrecking several other structures and cutting electricity An explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a one-year-old, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early on Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of a territorial dispute between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal. The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups disputed access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 150km northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Colonel Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area. Agudo had initially reported six people killed,
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
The US government has banned US government personnel in China, as well as family members and contractors with security clearances, from any romantic or sexual relationships with Chinese citizens, The Associated Press (AP) has learned. Four people with direct knowledge of the matter told the AP about the policy, which was put into effect by departing US ambassador Nicholas Burns in January shortly before he left China. The people would speak only on condition of anonymity to discuss details of a confidential directive. Although some US agencies already had strict rules on such relationships, a blanket “nonfraternization” policy, as it is known, has
RSS