AT least eight Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip as Israel continues to violate a nearly year-old “ceasefire”.
Palestinian journalist Muhammad Abdel Aziz al-Najjar was among those killed on Wednesday, Gaza’s Government Media Office said without providing the location or the circumstances of the attack.
Al-Najjar was the 263rd journalist killed by Israel since October 2023, the office said.
Separately, six people were killed on Wednesday by an Israeli drone attack on a passenger van in Tal al-Hawa, a neighbourhood in southwest Gaza City, according to witnesses and medical sources.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society, a humanitarian group that runs ambulance and emergency services, said its crews took 13 wounded people to al-Quds Hospital.
Medical sources told Al Jazeera the injuries sustained by the victims of the attack were “critical”.
“Doctors say it’s difficult to save the lives of the wounded because the health system is decimated by years of Israeli attacks and the blockade,” said Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary, reporting from Gaza City. “The number of dead in the strike could rise in the coming hours.”
Earlier, the official Palestinian Wafa news agency reported an Israeli attack on a residential apartment near al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City killed at least one woman.
Elsewhere, four Palestinians, including two children, were wounded when an Israeli drone hit a shelter for displaced people in southern Gaza, according to local sources cited by Wafa.
Two other Palestinians were seriously wounded by Israeli forces southeast of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, while Israeli tank fire was also reported in southern Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Strip.
The attacks came as the Ministry of Health in Gaza, which compiles casualty figures from hospitals across the territory, said in its latest daily update early on Wednesday that the bodies of at least nine people had arrived at hospitals during the last 24 hours.
Eight people were killed and one woman died from earlier wounds, bringing the number of people killed since the Israeli-Hamas October “ceasefire” to at least 1,431.
At least 5,026 people have been wounded over the same period, including 31 in the past 24 hours, the ministry said.