At least 20 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip over the past day, the Palestinian Authority's civil defense agency said on Saturday.
In Gaza City alone, nine Palestinians were killed in several attacks, a spokesman for the Hamas-controlled group told dpa.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) did not immediately provide comment. He regularly emphasizes that they are taking steps to protect civilians in the fight against the Palestinian Islamic group Hamas.
The IDF said earlier on Saturday that it carried out an air strike that destroyed a Hamas command post in an old school in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip.
There were no reports from the Israeli side of Hamas fighters being killed or injured or other casualties.
But the Palestinian news agency WAFA, citing Palestinian sources, said at least eight people were killed in the attack on the building, including women and children.
WAFA said refugee families had found shelter in the old school.
The Israeli military described the attack as a precision strike and said pre-emptive measures were taken to limit the risk of harm to civilians.
In another incident in Jabalia, three armed fighters were killed after they were spotted by a drone leaving the foot of a tunnel, according to the Israeli military.
Rescuers hampered by fuel, lack of spare parts
Fire and rescue services in Gaza are only partially operational, the local civil defense authority said on Saturday.
Some of the emergency vehicles in the cities of Gaza and Khan Younis are no longer running because there are no spare parts to maintain them, according to a statement from the Hamas-controlled authority.
Warehouses and spare parts workshops were destroyed during the war by Israeli airstrikes, he said.
In addition, severe fuel shortages have rendered more than half of the rescue service vehicles in the Gaza Strip inoperable, he said.
The Civil Defense appealed to regional and international humanitarian organizations to urgently bring spare parts and equipment to Gaza so that emergency services transport can be maintained.
The Gaza war was sparked by the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, which saw Palestinian militants kill around 1,200 people and deport another 250 to the Gaza Strip.
Israel responded by pounding Gaza with airstrikes and sending ground troops into the closed coastal zone with the stated aim of defeating the anti-Hamas group, which had controlled Gaza until then.
On Saturday, the Hamas-controlled health authority announced that more than 46,537 people have died in the Gaza Strip so far. They said they had increased the total number of those killed by 499 people after completing the data and confirming the identities of unsolved cases.
The figures cannot be independently verified and do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Late last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the military had so far “killed nearly 20,000 terrorists” in the Gaza Strip – a claim that is also impossible to verify.
Palestinian journalists gather around the body of Al-Ghad TV cameraman Saed Abu Nabhan at Al-Awda Hospital, who was martyred by Israeli occupation forces bullets in Al-Nuseirat camp. Photos by Omar Ashtawy/APA via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
