Israeli strikes in Gaza kill almost 20, including 2 infants, hospitals say, asking, "Where is the ceasefire?"
Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip — Israeli strikes in Gaza on Wednesday morning killed at least 19 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to hospital officials. Israel said the strikes would continue and called them a response to a militant attack on Israeli soldiers that seriously wounded one.
Among the Palestinians killed were five children, including a 5-month-old and a baby just 10 days old; seven women; and a paramedic, said hospital officials. They were the latest Palestinians killed in Gaza since a U.S.-brokered peace plan, which has been punctuated by deadly Israeli strikes, brought a ceasefire into effect on Oct. 10, 2025.
At least 556 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in that time, according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry, which put the death toll on Wednesday alone at 21.
The Israel Defense Forces, in a statement on Wednesday, accused Hamas militants of a "blatant violation of the current ceasefire agreement" with the alleged attack on forces in northern Gaza.
"Upon identification of the fire, IDF armored units [tanks] and IAF [Israeli Air Force] aircraft conducted strikes in the area," the military said.
The escalating Palestinian death toll has tested the U.S.-backed peace plan, and many Palestinians in the strip say it doesn't feel like the war has ended.
"The genocidal war against our people in the Gaza Strip continues," said Dr. Mohamed Abu Selmiya, director of Gaza City's Shifa Hospital, in a Facebook post. "Where is the ceasefire? Where are the mediators?"
An Israeli military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in line with military policy, told The Associated Press that Israel would continue striking the strip. Since the ceasefire took hold, Israel's military has defended deadly strikes by saying it is responding to Hamas violations or militant attacks on its soldiers. The military says four soldiers have been killed since the ceasefire took hold.
Mediators have condemned the attacks and Hamas has called them violations of the deal.
Early Wednesday, Israeli troops fired on a building in the Tuffah neighborhood in north Gaza, killing at least 11 people, most from the same family, said Shifa Hospital, which received the bodies. The dead included two parents, their 10-day-old girl, her 5-month-old cousin and their grandmother.
Israel's military said its aircraft and armored units had returned fire after militants started shooting at troops, badly wounding a reservist soldier who was evacuated to a hospital. Israel called the militant attack a violation of the deal.
After the Tuffah strike, Israeli fire continued across the strip, said hospital officials. An Israeli strike on a family's tent in the southern city of Khan Younis killed three people including a 12-year-old boy, said Nasser hospital, which received the bodies. Tank shelling in Gaza City's eastern neighborhood of Zaytoun killed another three Palestinians, according to Shifa Hospital, including a husband and his wife.
A strike on a tent in the Muwasi area of Khan Younis killed at least two people and wounded five others, according to a field hospital run by the Palestinian Red Crescent in the area. The dead included Hussein Hassan Hussein al-Semieri, a paramedic for the Palestinian Red Crescent who was on duty at the time, said the hospital.
More than 71,800 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war, according to the Gaza health ministry, which does not say how many were fighters or civilians. The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. They believe the actual death toll is substantially higher because many bodies have still to be recovered from the rubble.
Israel disputes the ministry's tally, but has provided no casualty figures for civilians in Gaza since it launched the war against Hamas in response to the group's Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack, which killed some 1,200 Israelis and saw 251 others taken hostage.