Israeli strikes kill 13 in Gaza

GAZA CITY: Israeli strikes on Gaza hit multiple residential buildings and killed at least 13 people, authorities said Sunday, despite Hamas saying it agreed to the latest stage of a deal to end the war.

Hamas said Friday it had agreed to a plan championed by US President Donald Trump that includes provisions for handing over its weapons and the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.

Israel has yet to officially comment on the agreement, but a political source has told AFP “that there will be no withdrawal whatsoever” without Hamas’s “genuine disarmament”.

Gaza’s civil defence rescue service, which operates under Hamas authority, on Sunday said eight people were killed in strikes around midnight that hit multiple residential buildings, and five others were killed later in the day.

In one overnight attack near the central Gaza Strip, a man and his wife were killed and several others were wounded when an Israeli military helicopter struck an apartment, a civil defence spokesman said.

An elderly man and a child were killed in another attack on an apartment west of Gaza City, and three people, including a child, were killed in a strike on a residential building northwest of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

“One person was killed and four others injured in an Israeli drone strike targeting a group of civilians near a camp for displaced people in Jabalia refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip,” he said.

A couple and their child were killed in a strike on an apartment west of Gaza City at dawn, the spokesman said, adding that the woman was pregnant.

Two others were killed in an Israeli drone strike on their vehicle in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, he said, with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospitals saying they were brothers.