An Israeli air strike on a house in Jabalia on Sunday killed Mohammed Mursi, deputy director of the Gaza Civil Emergency Service in the northern region of the Gaza Strip, and four members of his family, health officials said.
The Civil Emergency Service said in a statement that Morsi’s death brought to 83 the number of its members killed by Israeli fire since October 7.
There was no immediate comment from Israel on Morsi’s death.
Residents reported that Israeli forces also blew up several homes in the Zeitoun suburb of Gaza City, 5 kilometers from Jabalia. Medical teams reported they were unable to respond to desperate calls from some residents who said they were trapped inside their homes, some with injuries.
A resident of Gaza City, who lives about 1 km away, said, “We hear constant bombing in Zeitoun, we know they are blowing up houses there, we can’t sleep because of the sounds of explosions, the roar of tanks is heard close by and the drones don’t stop circling.”
“Zeitun is being wiped out because of the occupation, we are worried about the people trapped there,” he told Reuters via a chat app, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Later on Sunday, the Gaza Health Ministry said at least 15 people were killed in Israeli military strikes across the territory.
Residents in central and southern Gaza areas reported disruptions to internet and communications services, which the Palestinian telecommunications company said was due to “the ongoing (Israeli) aggression.”
Palestinians say disruptions to internet and communications services for the first time in months are affecting medical staff’s ability to send ambulances to bombed areas and making it difficult for people to check on relatives or report attacks.
Israel and Hamas continue to blame each other for the failure of mediators, including Qatar, Egypt and the US, to broker a ceasefire. The US is preparing to present a new proposal, but prospects for success appear bleak as differences between the two sides remain large.
Meanwhile on Sunday, the United Nations, in collaboration with local health authorities, extended by a day a vaccination drive to immunize children against polio in the southern Gaza Strip, before moving north on Monday.
The campaign aims to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza, where the first polio cases have been detected in 25 years. The campaign has been able to move forward with limited disruptions to the fighting.
UN officials said they were making progress, having reached more than half of the children who needed doses in the first two phases in the southern and central Gaza Strip. A second phase of vaccinations will be needed four weeks after the first.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict began on October 7, when the Hamas group attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, Israeli figures show.
Israel’s assault on Gaza killed more than 40,900 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while almost the entire population of 2.3 million was displaced, leading to a starvation crisis and World Court charges of genocide, which Israel denies.
The Palestinian Health Ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants in its casualty reports, but health officials say the majority of deaths have been civilians.
Israel, which has lost 340 soldiers in Gaza, says at least a third of the dead are Palestinian fighters.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
