Gaza rescuers say at least 18 killed in Israeli strikes

GAZA STRIP

Gaza rescuers and medics said Israeli air strikes killed at least 18 people across the Palestinian territory overnight and on Monday morning, including 10 in one attack on a house.

The 10 were killed and 15 others were injured when an air strike hit the home of the Al-Qassas family in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, a medic at Al-Awda hospital, where the bodies were brought, told AFP.

Gaza's civil defense agency confirmed the death toll, with its spokesman Mahmud Bassal saying the strike took place on Monday morning.

The agency said six Palestinians were killed in a similar air strike during the night on a house belonging to the Bassal family in Gaza City's Zeitun neighbourhood, a regular target of Israeli military raids since the war began in October.

Two people were killed in another overnight air strike in Rafah that targeted a house belonging to the Abu Shaar family, the agency said.

Several people were also wounded in these strikes, medics and rescuers said.

Israeli air strikes and artillery shelling have continued relentlessly amid an impasse over a ceasefire deal to facilitate the release of remaining hostages in Gaza in exchange for an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons.

The war in Gaza erupted after the Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian Hamas militants on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to official Israeli figures.

Militants also seized 251 hostages, 97 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel's retaliatory military offensive has so far killed at least 41,206 people in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

U.N. says the casualties are mostly women and children.