Six killed in Gaza, including children, as Israel ramps up military campaign

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed at least six people on Saturday across the Palestinian territory, where Israel has ramped up its military offensive in recent days.

“Our teams have recovered at least six dead,” civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

He said a couple were killed with their two young children in a pre-dawn strike on a house in the Amal quarter of the southern city of Khan Yunis.

Another two people were killed in a strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the centre of the territory, he said.

The Israeli military said it was unable to comment on individual strikes without their “precise geographical coordinates”.

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Israel resumed operations in Gaza on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire.

Gaza’s health ministry said Friday that at least 3,673 people had been killed in the territory since then, taking the war’s overall toll to 53,822, mostly civilians.

Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Militants also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said on Friday that Palestinians were enduring “the cruellest phase” of the war in Gaza, where more than a dozen food trucks were looted following the partial easing of a lengthy Israeli blockade.

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The World Food Programme called on Israel “to get far greater volumes of food assistance into Gaza faster”, saying: “Hunger, desperation, and anxiety over whether more food aid is coming, is contributing to rising insecurity.”

Aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip restarted on Monday for the first time since March 2, amid mounting condemnation of the Israeli blockade, which has resulted in severe shortages of food and medicines.