Gaza rescuers say Israeli strikes kill at least 40

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes on Monday killed at least 40 people across the Palestinian territory, which has been under an Israeli aid blockade for more than 50 days.

Israel resumed its military campaign in the Gaza Strip on March 18. A ceasefire agreement that had largely halted the fighting for two months before that collapsed over disagreements between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, whose 2023 attack triggered the war.

Civil defence official Mohammed al-Mughayyir told AFP that 40 people had been killed since dawn on Monday.

They included eight people who were killed in an Israeli strike on the Abu Mahadi family home in Jabalia, in the north of the territory.

“They were sleeping in their homes, feeling safe, when missiles hit… this scene makes the body shiver,” said Abdul Majeed Abu Mahadi, 67, who added that his brother was killed in the attack.

“If a person looked at this scene, they would have seen children, women and elderly men cut into pieces, it makes the heart ache, but what can we do?”

The civil defence agency reported that another 10 people were killed in an Israeli strike on the Al-Ghamari family home in the Al-Sudaniya area northwest of Gaza City.

A strike on the Al-Agha family home killed eight others in an area of Khan Yunis in the south, it added.

Fourteen others were killed in four separate strikes across the territory, the civil defence said, including one that hit a tent sheltering displaced people in the Al-Shafii camp, west of Khan Yunis.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Monday that at least 2,222 people have been killed since Israel resumed strikes, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,314.

The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Hamas also captured 251 people, 58 of whom are still being held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel says its renewed military campaign aims to force Hamas to free the remaining captives.