Israeli airstrikes kill four in Gaza, testing fragile ceasefire

Israeli airstrikes killed at least four Palestinians in Gaza on April 23, including one person in southern Khan Younis and three others in Maghazi, a refugee camp in central Gaza, in attacks that underscored how little protection the ceasefire has provided to civilians on the ground.

Palestinian health officials said the Khan Younis strike wounded several others. Israel’s military said that strike targeted militants transporting munitions and that they posed a threat to Israeli soldiers. It offered no immediate comment on the Maghazi strike, where Palestinian officials said the dead included a rescue worker and other emergency personnel. The split between the military’s account and Palestinian casualty reports has become a defining feature of the ceasefire, with each new strike renewing disputes over who is being hit and why.

The violence came as families in Gaza continued burying the dead from earlier attacks. At Gaza City’s Al Shifa Hospital, relatives gathered to lay to rest five people, including three children, who were killed the previous day in another Israeli strike on a northern Gaza town. Mohammed Baalousha captured the mood among mourners in a blunt assessment: “There is no ceasefire, no truce, nothing at all.” His words reflected a wider reality in Gaza, where the agreement has not stopped lethal strikes, mourning or displacement.

Since the ceasefire began in October, four Israeli soldiers and more than 780 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, a toll that shows the deal has failed to end the cycle of violence. The figures also suggest that the ceasefire has been enforced unevenly, with periodic strikes continuing to hit areas from the south to the central strip and the north still absorbing fresh losses. Rather than a clean halt to hostilities, the arrangement has left Gaza in a state of suspended danger, where military operations continue under the cover of a truce that both sides accuse the other of violating.

For mediators, the latest killings complicate any renewed push to stabilize the agreement. Each strike deepens civilian risk, hardens public anger and raises the likelihood that any pause in fighting will remain fragile, conditional and vulnerable to the next explosion.