GAZA CITY: Israeli strikes on Gaza hit multiple residential buildings and killed at least 13 people, authorities said yesterday, despite Hamas saying it agreed to the latest stage of a deal to end the war.
Hamas said Friday it had agreed to a plan championed by US President Donald Trump that includes provisions for handing over its weapons and the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.
Israel has yet to officially comment on the agreement, but a political source has told AFP “that there will be no withdrawal whatsoever” without Hamas’s “genuine disarmament”.
Gaza’s civil defence rescue service, which operates under Hamas authority, on Sunday said eight people were killed in strikes around midnight that hit multiple residential buildings, and five others were killed later in the day.
A couple and their child were killed in a strike on an apartment west of Gaza City at dawn, the spokesman said, adding that the woman was pregnant.
Two others were killed in an Israeli drone strike on their vehicle in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, he said, with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospitals saying they were brothers.
Hamas politburo member Ghazi Hamad condemned the strikes yesterday, and told AFP that “Israel’s escalation in Gaza today confirms that Israel doesn’t want to reach an agreement.”
On Saturday, authorities reported that eight people had been killed in strikes that damaged a hospital’s medical supplies and targeted a rooftop. The Israeli army said two of the strikes targeted members of the Army of Islam and Islamic Jihad militant groups.
Nickolay Mladenov, High Representative of the Board of Peace, the international body overseeing the US-backed Gaza plan, said the latest strikes compromised diplomatic efforts towards the implementation of the plan.
“Two days of strikes across Gaza have killed civilians and destroyed medical supplies that people depend on,” he wrote on X.
“This comes after intense efforts by the Board of Peace and the mediators… to bring the Palestinian factions in Gaza to agree to a Roadmap on the full implementation of President Trump’s plan. Both parties carry obligations under the Comprehensive Plan”.
