Written by Nidal Al-Mughrabi and Claudia Tanios
CAIRO (Reuters) – Israeli air strikes killed at least 43 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, including 11 people in a camp housing displaced families, medics said.
They added that the 11 included women and children in the Al-Mawasi area, which was designated as a humanitarian zone for civilians earlier in the war between Israel and the ruling Hamas movement in Gaza, which has now entered its fifteenth month.
Gaza Police Director General Mahmoud Salah and his assistant Hossam Shahwan were killed in the raid, according to the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in Gaza.
She added in a statement, “By committing the crime of assassinating the Director General of Police in the Gaza Strip, the occupation insists on spreading chaos in the enclave and deepening the human suffering of citizens.”
The Israeli army said that it carried out a raid based on intelligence information in Al-Mawasi, west of the city of Khan Yunis, and eliminated Shahwan, describing him as the commander of Hamas’ security forces in southern Gaza. Salah's death was not mentioned.
Other Israeli air strikes led to the deaths of at least 26 Palestinians, including six at the Interior Ministry headquarters in Khan Yunis and others in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, the Beach camp, and the Maghazi camp in central Gaza.
The Israeli army said that it targeted Hamas activists, which intelligence information indicated were working in a command and control center “located inside the Khan Yunis municipality building in the humanitarian zone.”
“At the beginning of the year, we received reports of another attack on Al-Mawasi that killed dozens of people, which is another reminder that there is no humanitarian zone let alone a safe zone (in Gaza),” said Philippe Lazzarini, Director-General of UNRWA. For the sake of Palestinian refugees, UNRWA said in a post on the X website.
“Every day without a ceasefire will bring more tragedies.”
In response to a question about the death toll announced on Thursday, an Israeli army spokesman said that it followed international law in waging war on Gaza and that it had taken “possible precautions to mitigate the harm to civilians.”
Later on Thursday, medics said separate Israeli air strikes killed at least four people on Al-Jalaa Street in central Gaza City and two in the Zaytoun neighborhood.
The Israeli army accused Gaza activists of using residential areas for shelter. Hamas denies this.
Islamic Jihad, a smaller ally of Hamas, said it fired rockets at Kibbutz Holit in southern Israel near Gaza on Thursday. The Israeli army said that it intercepted a shell in the area that had crossed from southern Gaza.
Israel killed more than 45,500 Palestinians in the war, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. Most of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been displaced, and much of the small coastal area crowded with buildings has been reduced to rubble.
The war was sparked by an October 7, 2023, Hamas cross-border attack on southern Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage in Gaza, according to Israeli statistics.
