Israeli air strikes kill dozens across Gaza Strip

An Israeli soldier covers his ears as an artillery gunner fires into the Gaza Strip from a position in southern Israel Picture: Matias Delacroix/AP

Israeli air strikes killed at least 26 people across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, hitting Hamas security officers and an Israeli-declared humanitarian zone.

“Everyone was taking shelter in their tents from the cold, and suddenly we found the world turning upside down. Why, and for what?” said Ziyad Abu Jabal, displaced from Gaza City, after the strike in the seaside humanitarian zone known as Muwasi.

Hundreds of thousands of displaced people are huddling in Muwasi in damp winter weather.

The early morning strike there killed at least 10 people, including three children and two senior Hamas police officers.

Palestinian children play next to a building destroyed by Israeli army strikes (Abdel Kareem Hana/AP)

Israel’s military said it targeted a senior officer in the Hamas-run police force. It said he was involved in gathering intelligence used by Hamas’s armed wing in attacks on Israeli forces.

Another Israeli strike killed at least eight Palestinians in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. The men were members of local committees that help secure aid convoys, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which received the bodies.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strike.

In southern Gaza, Israel’s military killed five policemen in eastern Khan Younis. Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said the strike targeted the head of the Hamas internal security force in southern Gaza.

“Where did we find him? Where else, but of course hiding in the humanitarian zone in Khan Younis, where Gazans are sheltering from this war,” Mr Mencer said.

Israel has repeatedly targeted the police in Gaza during 15 months of war, contributing to a breakdown of law and order in the territory that has made it difficult for humanitarian groups to deliver aid. Israel accuses the militant Hamas group of hijacking aid for its own purposes.

The Hamas-run government had a police force numbering in the tens of thousands that maintained a high degree of public security before the war, while also violently suppressing dissent. Now officers have largely vanished from the streets in many areas.

A destroyed part of Gaza City as seen from southern Israel (Tsafrir Abayov/AP)

Meanwhile, three Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike that hit a group of people walking in the street in Maghazi in central Gaza. Their bodies were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

The war was sparked by Hamas-led militants’ October 7 2023 attack on Israel. The militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, and at least a third are believed to be dead.

Israel’s offensive in retaliation has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which says women and children make up more than half the dead.

Israel’s military says it only targets militants and blames Hamas for civilian deaths because its fighters operate in dense residential areas. The army says it has killed 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The war has caused widespread destruction and displaced some 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, many of them multiple times.

Hunger is widespread. Children, some barefoot or in sandals, waited in line with metal pails or other containers at a food distribution centre in Deir al-Balah on Thursday.