Israeli airstrikes kill civilians across Gaza, tent camp among sites hit

Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip have killed at least nine Palestinians, Palestinian civil defence officials said, as strikes hit both northern and southern Gaza and "included shelling of a tent camp." The account adds to a patchwork of casualty reports from hospital directors, medics and international wire services that give differing tolls and may describe separate incidents.

Medics told Reuters that an airstrike on a tent encampment housing displaced families killed at least four people. Those figures echo an AP account that described a series of separate strikes a day earlier that hospitals said killed at least 30 Palestinians, including several children, and hit an apartment building in Gaza City, a tent camp in Khan Younis and a police station in Gaza City.

Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis told AP the strike on the tent camp caused a fire that killed seven people, including a father, his three children and three grandchildren. Shifa Hospital director Mohamed Abu Selmiya said an airstrike on a police station in Gaza City killed at least 14 and wounded others. An AP photo caption dated Jan. 31 identified one named casualty, Sham Abu Hadaiyd, killed in a tent strike in Khan Younis, underscoring that similar attacks have been documented in recent weeks.

An Instagram post cited by compilers of the reporting asserted that strikes on Wednesday killed at least 21 Palestinians, including several children, though the post itself provided no further sourcing. The differing tallies and the way they are tied to different days underscore the difficulty of reconciling reports coming from multiple hospitals, medics and local emergency services in a densely populated territory where access for independent verification is limited.

Israel’s military, as reported by AP, framed its operations as responses to ceasefire violations, saying its attacks since October have been responses to violations of the agreement and that Saturday’s strikes followed "two separate ceasefire violations a day earlier, in which Israeli forces killed three militants who emerged from a tunnel in an Israeli-controlled area of Rafah and four who approached troops near the dividing line." The Israeli military did not provide named officials in the cited excerpts.

Regional mediators reacted sharply. Egypt condemned the Israeli strikes in the "strongest terms" and warned they represent "a direct threat to the political course" of the truce. Qatar called the strikes a "dangerous escalation" and warned that continuing them poses a "direct threat" to the political process. Their statements came as AP reported that the Rafah crossing into Egypt was set to open the next day in a limited way, the first major step in what it described as the second phase of a U.S.-brokered ceasefire that took effect on Oct. 10.

Humanitarian strains in Gaza compound the political stakes. AP noted that most medical infrastructure has been destroyed during the fighting and that the Rafah corridor is viewed as a critical lifeline for tens of thousands of Palestinians needing treatment outside the territory. With casualty counts diverging and investigators limited by access, the immediate challenge for mediators and aid agencies will be to verify losses on the ground while preventing further escalation that could unravel a fragile truce.