At least four Palestinians were killed and 20 wounded in three separate Israeli military strikes in central and northern Gaza on Sunday, a source at the Health Ministry told Al Manassa, as limited travel through the Rafah land crossing with Egypt resumed.
A direct airstrike hit a police vehicle belonging to Gaza’s Ministry of Interior west of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing three police officers and wounding two conscripts, in addition to injuring 10 people who were walking in the street when the vehicle was targeted, a medical source at Al-Awda Hospital told Al Manassa.
A witness told Al Manassa that Israeli forces hit the vehicle with a direct missile as it was passing through the camp’s main street during peak hours, when the road was crowded with pedestrians, wounding a large number of them.
In a statement on WhatsApp, the Ministry of Interior and National Security mourned the officers, saying they were on duty on the third day of Eid. The ministry condemned what it called continued Israeli attacks on police personnel while they were providing security services to civilians, and called on the international community to act urgently “to curb the criminal behavior of the occupation.”
In a separate strike, the Israeli army fired two missiles at an apartment in the Al-Taj building in Yarmouk neighborhood without prior warning.
The strike destroyed and set fire to the apartment, which civil defense crews managed to put out using their limited resources, civil defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told Al Manassa. He said the apartment, located in an inhabited residential building, was completely destroyed.
A source at Gaza’s Health Ministry told Al Manassa that ambulance crews transferred four wounded people to Al-Shifa Hospital for treatment, with no fatalities reported in that strike, adding that some of the injuries were critical.
A witness told Al Manassa the area was crowded with civilians, as there was a restaurant beneath the targeted building packed with customers on the evening of the third day of Eid Al-Fitr. The explosion turned what had been moments of family celebration into fear and panic.
In northern Gaza, Israeli forces also struck a gathering of civilians in Sheikh Radwan neighborhood on Sunday, killing a young man and wounding more than five others, who were taken to Al-Shifa Hospital for treatment.
In a statement published by its spokesperson Avichay Adraee, the Israeli army said it had killed a “terrorist operative,” who had taken part in attacks “inside the territories of the state of Israel.”
The Israeli army said the man posed an immediate threat and was targeted based on intelligence indicating that he had been planning further attacks.
The attacks came as more Gazans were allowed to leave Gaza for Egypt for medical treatment and 28 others returned through Rafah, in a limited reopening announced by the Israeli army earlier this month.
A journalist from Khan Younis told Al Manassa that 25 people left Gaza for Egypt through the Rafah land crossing on Sunday morning, including eight patients and 17 companions, to receive needed treatment. The Israeli occupation also allowed 28 travelers to return, including eight employees of the Palestinian Civil Affairs Authority, which manages the crossing from the Palestinian side.
The 28 returnees arrived at Nasser Medical Complex around midnight Monday. One of them told Al Manassa, on condition of anonymity, that Israeli forces arrested a young man who had been accompanying his brother, who had been receiving treatment in Egypt before the October 7, 2023 war.
According to the source, Israeli forces took the young man in for questioning. After seven hours of waiting, the International Committee of the Red Cross team accompanying them asked about him, and Israeli forces informed them that he had been arrested and transferred to a distant location without providing any further information.
The ICRC team refused to move on without him, the source said, but Israeli forces said he had been transferred inside Israel, forcing the convoy to continue and bring the returnees to Khan Younis without him.
The source described the return to Gaza as “a journey of torment” because of Israeli interrogations and arrests at the checkpoint near the crossing gate on the Palestinian side.
On March 15, the Israeli army’s coordinator for the southern areas said in a Facebook post that the Rafah crossing would reopen in both directions starting Wednesday, March 18, for limited movement of people only. He said the decision followed a security assessment and a review of conditions for resuming operations while maintaining security restrictions.
He said “additional screening and checks” would be carried out at the Regavim checkpoint as part of the required security arrangements.
