Arab News | Israeli strike in Gaza kills three including child: civil defense

GAZA CITY: Three Palestinians, including a young girl, were killed Monday in an Israeli airstrike on a camp for displaced people in the southern Gaza Strip, medical sources and first responders said.

Civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said a total of 11 people had been killed and 50 wounded by Israeli fire and airstrikes in Gaza over the past 24 hours.

“We transported three martyrs, including a child, following an Israeli airstrike targeting a camp for displaced people in the Al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Yunis,” Bassal told AFP.

Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis confirmed the three deaths.

“Their bodies were torn apart by direct hits from shrapnel from the Israeli missile,” the hospital said, adding that several wounded people, including a child and a woman, had also come in for treatment.

The hospital identified the deceased as Hossam Al-Zamli, Tamer Abu Sneima, and Jouri Al-Soufi, a young girl. The Gaza education ministry gave her age as seven.

Israel’s military told AFP it was looking into reports of the strike.

A security source in Gaza told AFP that “several tanks and military vehicles, accompanied by a military bulldozer, advanced on Monday morning into the area west of the Yellow Line in the eastern part of Deir Al-Balah,” in central Gaza.

After a US-brokered ceasefire took hold in Gaza in October 2025, the so-called Yellow Line was established to divide the areas under Israeli control — more than 60 percent of the territory — from those under Hamas control.

The military advance Monday coincided with “heavy gunfire by the occupation forces toward the eastern and northern areas” of Deir Al-Balah, home to hundreds of displaced families, the source added.

Since the ceasefire began last year, more than 1,500 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry.

The war began on October 7, 2023, following an unprecedented attack by militant group Hamas on southern Israel that killed 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel responded with a massive military campaign that has destroyed much of Gaza and killed more than 74,500 people, according to the territory’s health ministry, which operates under Hamas and whose figures are considered accurate by the United Nations.