DEIR AL-BALAH: Israeli strikes across the southern Gaza Strip killed at least 19 Palestinians overnight into Sunday, including a senior Hamas political leader, officials said.
Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen who are allied with Hamas meanwhile launched another missile at Israel, setting off air raid sirens. The Israeli military said the projectile was intercepted, and there were no reports of casualties or damage.
The Israeli military on Sunday urged residents of the southern Gaza city of Rafah to evacuate as forces launched an offensive against militants in the area.
In a statement on X, military spokesman Avichay Adraee said the army “launched an offensive to strike the terrorist organizations” in Rafah’s Tal Al-Sultan district, calling on Palestinians there to leave the “dangerous combat zone.”
Two hospitals in southern Gaza said they had received 17 bodies from strikes overnight, including several women and children.
The European Hospital said the dead included five children and their parents killed in a strike in Khan Younis. Another family — two girls and their parents — were killed in a separate strike on the southern city. The Kuwaiti Hospital said it received the bodies of a woman and child killed in another strike.
Hamas separately said that Salah Bardawil, a member of its political bureau and of the Palestinian parliament, was killed in a strike near Khan Younis that also killed his wife. Bardawil was a well-known member of the group’s political wing who gave media interviews over the years.
The Hamas official and his wife were not included in the tolls reported by the hospitals.
Israel ended its ceasefire with Hamas last week when it launched a surprise wave of airstrikes that killed hundreds of Palestinians across the territory. The Houthis resumed their attacks on Israel, portraying them as an act of solidarity with the Palestinians, despite recent US strikes targeting the Yemeni rebels.
The ceasefire that took hold in January paused 15 months of heavy fighting ignited by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack into Israel.
Twenty-five Israeli hostages and the bodies of eight others were released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, Israeli forces pulled back to a buffer zone, allowing hundreds of thousands of people to return to what remains of their homes, and there was a surge in humanitarian aid.
The sides were supposed to begin negotiations in early February on the next phase of the truce, in which Hamas was to release the remaining 59 hostages — 35 of whom are believed to be dead — in exchange for more Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal.
Those talks never began, and Israel backed out of the ceasefire agreement after Hamas refused Israeli and US-backed proposals to release more hostages ahead of any talks on a lasting truce.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostage in the Oct. 7 attack. Most of the captives have been released in ceasefire agreements or other deals, while Israeli forces rescued eight alive and recovered dozens of bodies.
Israel’s offensive has killed at least 49,747 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which says women and children make up more than half the dead but does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its records. Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The offensive has destroyed vast areas of Gaza and at its height had displaced around 90 percent of the population. Israel sealed off the territory of 2 million Palestinians from food, fuel, medicine and other supplies earlier this month to pressure Hamas to change the ceasefire agreement.
