AT LEAST four Palestinians have been killed and several others wounded after Israeli forces bombed a residential building sheltering displaced people in Gaza City in a further violation of an October “ceasefire”.
The Israeli air attack took place in Gaza City’s Nassr neighbourhood and brought the number of people killed on Monday to at least seven.
Footage from the scene showed emergency teams transporting casualties in ambulances as residents carried a body towards the morgue at al-Shifa Hospital.
Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim Al Khalili, reporting from Gaza City, said the targeted building had been damaged during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and was being used as a shelter for displaced Palestinians.
“People have been forced to shelter in this partially damaged residential building due to the lack and scarcity of shelter due to the destruction of most of Gaza’s residential buildings,” he said.
“This attack has spread panic and left people wondering what might come next in the light of this deadly escalation carried out by the Israeli military,” he added.
According to authorities in Gaza, Israel has violated the United States-brokered “ceasefire” 1,520 times since it came into effect on October 10. At least 581 people have been killed and 1,553 wounded since then.
A witness at the scene of the latest attack told the Reuters news agency that the targeted apartment was housing children. He also questioned the prospects for peace, expressing anger towards Israel and the US.
“What peace is this?” he said. “May God punish you, America and Israel.”
Earlier on Monday, Israeli forces killed a 54-year-old man in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, and shot dead a Palestinian fisherman off the coast of the southern city of Khan Younis.
Israeli forces also shot dead a Palestinian farmer near the central city of Deir el-Balah. The Palestinian Wafa news agency identified the victim as Khaled Baraka.
In a separate incident, Israel’s military announced the killing of four fighters who emerged from a tunnel in southern Gaza, and who the military said had attacked its troops.
Hamas military spokesman Abu Obeida later described the incident as “heroic resistance”.
Hamas said in late November that dozens of its fighters were holed up in southern Gaza’s tunnels, beneath areas controlled by the Israeli military.
This was a sticking point in the early days of the ceasefire, with Israel insisting the fighters posed a security threat, while Hamas sought safe passage for them.
Since then, many of the fighters have been killed in clashes with Israeli troops during operations targeting tunnels near Rafah, according to the Israeli military.
In addition to the near-daily killing of Palestinians, Israel also severely restricts quantities of food, medicine, medical supplies, shelter materials and prefabricated houses from entering Gaza, where some 2 million Palestinians – including 1.5 million displaced – live in catastrophic conditions.
Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza on October 8, 2023, with support from the US, killing 72,032 people, wounding some 171,661, and destroying 90 percent of the territory’s infrastructure.
The United Nations estimates it could cost more than $70bn to rebuild Gaza.