ISRAELI forces have killed at least four Palestinians and wounded several others across Gaza despite a six-week ceasefire, as a Palestinian armed group announced recovering the body of another captive in the war-torn territory.
The victims on Monday included a Palestinian man who was killed in a drone attack in the southern town of Bani Suheila, in an area controlled by Israeli forces beyond the so-called “yellow line”.
Separately, a Palestinian child was also killed in northern Gaza City when ordnances left behind by Israeli forces exploded, according to the territory’s civil defence.
The group said several more children were wounded, with some in critical condition.
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Gaza City, said Israeli attacks also continued throughout the day, with artillery, air raids and helicopter strikes reported in both northern and southern parts of the enclave.
In Beit Lahiya, Israeli fire hit areas outside the yellow line. In the south, tanks and helicopters targeted territory northeast of Rafah and the outskirts of Khan Younis.
“There are extensive Israeli attacks beyond the yellow line that have led to the systematic destruction of Gaza’s eastern neighbourhoods,” Abu Azzoum said.
Testimonies gathered by families, he added, point to a “systematic attempt to destroy Gaza’s neighbourhoods and create buffer zones, making these areas completely uninhabitable, which complicates a return for families”.
In central Gaza, civil defence teams, operating with police and Red Cross support, recovered the bodies of eight members of a single family from the rubble of their home in the Maghazi camp, the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported, which was struck in an earlier Israeli attack.
The Gaza Government Media Office said the number of bodies retrieved since the ceasefire began has now reached 582, while more than 9,500 Palestinians remain missing beneath the ruins of bombed-out districts.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an armed group allied with Hamas, meanwhile, announced it had recovered the body of an Israeli captive in Nuseirat camp in central Gaza.
If the body is identified, two more will have to be recovered under the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal. Israel is supposed to return the bodies of 15 Palestinians in exchange for each captive’s body.
Hamas has previously said the widespread destruction has hampered efforts to locate the remaining bodies.
Also on Monday, the GHF, a US-backed entity that operated parallel to United Nations aid structures, announced the end of its activities in Gaza.