By Nidal al-Mughrabi
CAIRO (Reuters) -Israeli airstrikes in Gaza killed at least 20 people and wounded more than 80, local health authorities said on Saturday, in a further test of a fragile ceasefire between the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel.
Witnesses and medics said the first attack hit a car in the densely populated Rimal neighborhood, setting it ablaze. It was not immediately clear whether the five dead were passengers of the car or included passersby. Dozens of people rushed to extinguish the fire and rescue the victims.
Shortly after the attack on the car, the Israeli air force carried out two separate airstrikes on two houses in Deir Al-Balah city and Nuseirat camp, in the central Gaza Strip, killing at least 10 people and wounding several others, medics said.
Later on Saturday a new Israeli airstrike on a house in western Gaza City killed at least five Palestinians and wounded others, medics said, taking Saturday’s death toll to at least 20.
ISRAEL, HAMAS SWAP ACCUSATIONS OF BREACHING TRUCE
The Israeli military said a gunman had crossed into Israeli-held territory in Gaza and exploited “the humanitarian road in the area through which humanitarian aid enters southern Gaza”, calling it a “blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement”.
The military said it was striking targets in Gaza in response.
A Hamas official in Gaza rejected the Israeli military’s allegations as baseless and an “excuse to kill”, saying the group was committed to the ceasefire agreement.
Israel and Hamas have repeatedly accused each other of violating the truce, concluded more than six weeks ago.
Hamas said in a statement earlier in the day that Israel’s “escalating violations” put a responsibility on mediators and the U.S. to confront it and preserve the ceasefire.
Israel also called on mediators to “insist that Hamas fulfil its side of the ceasefire” by returning the remaining three deceased hostages and completing its disarmament, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said.
The October 10 ceasefire in the two-year Gaza war has eased the conflict, enabling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to Gaza’s ruins.
Israel has pulled troops back from city positions, and aid flows have increased.
But violence has not completely halted. Hamas has been seeking to reassert itself and some are concerned about a de facto partition of the territory, where conditions are dire. Palestinian health authorities say Israeli forces have killed 316 people in strikes in Gaza since the truce.
Israel says three of its soldiers have been killed since the ceasefire began and it has attacked scores of fighters.
The war in Gaza began after Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and seized 251 hostages in an attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 69,700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, health officials in Gaza say.
Under the terms of the truce, Hamas released all 20 living hostages held in Gaza in return for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and wartime detainees held by Israel.
Hamas also agreed to hand over the remains of 28 dead hostages in exchange for the bodies of 360 Palestinian militants killed in the war. The remains of 25 hostages have so far been handed over.
Israel has returned 330 bodies of Palestinians, according to the territory’s health ministry.
(Reporting by Nidal Al-Mughrabi. Additional reporting by Emily Rose in Jerusalem. Editing by Toby Chopra, William Maclean and Mark Potter)
