Five killed as Israel launches strikes in Gaza: Report
Israel says it launched an air strike in southern Gaza in retaliation for an attack by militants earlier in the day.
Five Palestinians have been reportedly killed after the Israeli military launched airstrikes on targets in the Gaza Strip, the Hamas-controlled civil defence authority says.
A tent in the southern town of Khan Younis, where displaced people were reportedly sheltering, was hit. The information could not initially be independently verified.
The Israeli military said the strike targeted a member of Hamas, accusing the Palestinian militant group of having earlier attacked Israeli soldiers and violated the ceasefire agreement.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said in a statement: “Earlier (Wednesday), the Hamas terrorist organisation carried out a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement, during which terrorists attacked IDF troops deployed in the Rafah area. As a result of the encounter, five soldiers were injured.”
“In response to the violation, the IDF, guided by IDF intelligence and the ISA, struck a Hamas terrorist in the southern Gaza Strip.”
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This information could also not initially be independently verified.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had previously warned that Israel would not tolerate its soldiers being harmed and would respond accordingly.
Since the ceasefire began on October 10, there have been repeated isolated incidents resulting in deaths in the Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers have also been killed since then.
Earlier, Israel received a body that Hamas said is one of the last two deceased hostages in the Gaza Strip.
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The body has been transferred by the Red Cross to the Israeli military and will undergo forensic identification, a statement from the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said.
Hamas also handed over remains on Tuesday, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office later said were not of any hostage.
The handover of the last hostages’ bodies in the Gaza Strip would complete a key condition of the initial part of US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the two-year war, which also provides for the Rafah border crossing between the enclave and Egypt to open in both directions.
Israel has kept the crossing shut since the ceasefire came into effect in October, saying Hamas must abide by the agreement to return all hostages still in the Gaza Strip, living and deceased.
“The crossing will be opened both ways when all of our hostages have been returned,” Israeli government spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian told reporters.
Since the fragile truce started, Hamas has returned all 20 living hostages and 26 bodies in exchange for about 2000 Palestinian detainees and convicted prisoners but two more deceased captives – an Israeli police officer and a Thai agricultural worker – are still in the Gaza Strip.
The armed wing of the Hamas-allied Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, the al-Quds Brigades, said it had found a hostage body after conducting a search in the north of the enclave, along with a team from the Red Cross.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they had handed over the body to the Red Cross late on Wednesday afternoon. The groups did not say which of the two remaining deceased hostages they believed it to be.
The two are Israeli police officer Ran Gvili and Thai national Sudthisak Rinthalak, both kidnapped during Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered two years of devastating war in Gaza.
COGAT, the Israeli military arm that oversees humanitarian matters, said the Rafah crossing would be opened in the coming days to allow Palestinians to cross into Egypt.
-with DPA and AP
