Israeli airstrikes continued in Gaza for a second straight day yesterday, killing at least 13 Palestinians, despite US President Donald Trump’s announcement of a breakthrough in efforts to implement last year’s Gaza ceasefire agreement.Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen said yesterday that there was no deal to halt attacks on Gaza and that he saw a need for Israel, which already controls 70% of the Strip, to take full control of it.
Cohen is a member of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s security cabinet, a small circle of ministers that oversees security and diplomatic policy.Palestinian health officials said Israeli warplanes carried out separate strikes across the enclave in the northern Gaza City, central city of Deir al-Balah, and the southern area of Khan Younis.The Israeli military said the strikes in Deir al-Balah were targeting two commanders of Hamas’ elite "Nukhba” force.
The Gaza City and Jabalia strikes also targeted "military operatives” but the military was still reviewing the situation, it said.At least 1,230 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes since a ceasefire was reached in October.
Trump said on Thursday there had been a breakthrough after Hamas agreed to disarm under a US-backed initiative to implement the ceasefire agreement reached last year in Egypt.Trump’s Board of Peace, the US-led body overseeing the ceasefire, published on Friday a 15-point roadmap setting out the final steps for implementing the agreement.The roadmap has yet to be implemented.
Hamas has said it will hand over its weapons for storage only after Israel halts military operations and withdraws its forces in line with last year’s agreement. An Israeli official told Reuters there would be no withdrawal from the military’s current positions unless Hamas undergoes "genuine disarmament”.Cohen told Army Radio he did not believe Hamas would disarm, but that it would rather play games and try to hide its weaponry.
Netanyahu has not commented publicly on the initiative, while National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has called it unacceptable and said Israel should continue assassinating Hamas leaders. Former senior Fatah official Mohammed Dahlan, who is based in the UAE, said in a Facebook post that Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a senior adviser involved in the US initiative, had told him he was working with the Israeli side to stop attacks on Gaza.Dahlan said contacts with the US were continuing to ensure the agreement was fully implemented, adding that its success now depended on Israel fully ending its daily attacks on Gaza.
Gaza’s civil defence rescue service, which operates under Hamas authority yesterday 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. Authorities reported on Saturday that eight people had been killed in strikes that damaged a hospital’s medical supplies and targeted a rooftop.