Gaza civil defence says Israeli strikes kill at least 43

GAZA CITY, Palestine: Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli air strikes on Sunday killed at least 43 Palestinians, including six children near a water distribution point.

The attacks came with apparent deadlock in a week of indirect talks in Qatar between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas for a ceasefire in the territory.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that Gaza City was hit by several strikes overnight and in the early morning, killing eight, “including women and children” and wounding others.

An Israeli air strike hit a family home near the Nuseirat refugee camp, south of Gaza City, resulting in “10 martyrs and several injured”, Bassal said.

In central Gaza, six children were among eight people killed when a drone “hit a potable water distribution point in an area for displaced people” in the Nuseirat camp, he added.

Several other people were wounded, he said.

In the territory’s south, three people were killed when Israeli jets hit a tent sheltering displaced Palestinians in the coastal Al-Mawasi area, according to the civil defence spokesman.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has recently intensified its operations across Gaza, more than 21 months into the war triggered by Hamas’s October 2023 attack.

The vast majority of Gaza’s population of more than two million people have been displaced at least once during the war, which has created dire humanitarian conditions in the territory.