Israeli strikes kill at least 8 in Gaza: civil defence

Gaza City: Israeli attacks on Gaza killed at least eight people on Thursday, a spokesman for the civil defence agency in the Palestinian territory told AFP.

“At least eight martyrs as a result of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City at dawn,” with seven killed in strikes on residential buildings and one in the Al-Shati refugee camp to the west of Gaza City, said spokesman Mahmoud Bassal.

Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City also reported 15 people wounded in the strikes, he added.

Despite a truce technically in effect since October, daily violence has rocked the Gaza Strip, over half of which is under Israeli military control in defiance of the ceasefire’s terms.

Israel has killed at least 936 people since the ceasefire began, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which operates under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the UN.

Hamas accuses Israel of violating the ceasefire.

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The first phase of the truce involved the release of the last Israeli hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinians detained by Israel.

A transition to the second phase of the ceasefire, which was supposed to involve Hamas’s disarmament and a gradual withdrawal of the Israeli army, has been stalled for months.

Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered the military to take control of 70 percent of the Gaza Strip.

The latest head of Hamas’s armed wing in Gaza, Mohammed Odeh, was killed in an Israeli strike last week, a month after his predecessor was also killed.