The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza announced Sunday that nine Palestinians had been killed and 41 others injured across the Strip over the past 24 hours. The announcement followed Israeli airstrikes on various areas, which killed women and children, while the Israeli military announced a series of targeted assassinations it had carried out on Saturday and Wednesday.
On Saturday, Israeli strikes killed at least nine people, including a child and a journalist. According to unnamed medical sources cited by Reuters, four Palestinians, including two women and a child, were killed in a strike on a residential apartment in Gaza City’s Sabra neighborhood. Three others were killed in an attack on a house in the Bureij refugee camp, with additional strikes recorded in Beit Lahiya and Khan Younis.
Separately, the Al Jazeera Media Network announced Sunday that its cameraman, Ahmed Wishah, had been killed in an Israeli strike on a home in the central Gaza Strip’s Bureij refugee camp. His death brings the total number of Palestinian journalists killed since the beginning of the Israeli military offensive in Gaza to 262.
Al Jazeera condemned the killing as an “appalling crime,” saying it reflected an ongoing, systematic policy targeting journalists. It renewed its call on the international community and legal institutions to “take urgent, practical measures to hold the Israeli officials involved… accountable.”
The Israeli military, however, alleged in a WhatsApp post on Sunday that it had targeted Wishah because he did not only work as a camera operator for Al Jazeera, claiming Wishah was a “member” of Hamas’s military wing who worked as a sniper. It added that he was killed alongside two other alleged members of the movement, though it provided no evidence to support these claims.
In a separate post on the same channel, the Israeli military said it had assassinated two Palestinians, Hassan El-Qudra and Mohamed El-Farra, in the southern Gaza Strip the previous Wednesday. It claimed the two were active in a money-transfer network for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and alleged that they helped transfer more than 500 million shekels to Hamas’ military wing through a network comprising dozens of couriers and exchange offices in Turkey and the Gaza Strip. The military said these funds were used to pay Hamas members’ salaries and finance operations against the Israeli forces and civilians. Again, no evidence was provided.
According to a statement from the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza on Sunday, the toll of the Israeli war on the strip has reached 73,032 killed and 173,357 injured since October 7, 2023. Of these, 1,021 deaths have been recorded since the ceasefire began last October.
