The Israeli army intensified its artillery shelling and airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing at least 11 Palestinians, including five members of one family. The attacks coincided with forced evacuation orders for a displacement camp sheltering more than 300 families in the Zeitoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City.
A member of Adham Nasman’s family told Al Manassa that Israeli airstrikes hit an apartment in the Nasr neighborhood, west of Gaza City, on Saturday evening, killing Nasman, a commander in Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, along with his wife and three of their children.
The family member said Nasman and his family were killed inside the apartment, which was completely destroyed by two missiles fired from a warplane. One of his children survived because he was outside the home when the strike occurred.
The source said the densely populated area received no warning before the strikes, a claim corroborated by one of the neighbors who told Al Manassa: “We were sitting in the living room when something suddenly exploded, and shrapnel and dust covered our home and the neighboring houses. We ran outside in fear. They had bombed our neighbors without any prior warning.”
More than 20 people wounded in the same attack were admitted to the emergency department at Al-Shifa Hospital, including children in critical condition, according to a source at the hospital.
Nasman’s neighbors in shock after the strike, July 18, 2026.In Zeitoun, the Israeli army issued immediate evacuation orders for displaced Palestinians living in the Abu Maraheel camp and surrounding areas.
A camp official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said an Israeli officer called him and ordered the complete evacuation of the area ahead of an imminent military operation.
After receiving the orders, dozens of families were forced to gather their few belongings and flee once again, with nowhere safe to go.
“They said there had been a ceasefire for nearly a year, but the bombing and killing never stopped,” Amani Al-Sayed, a 41-year-old displaced woman, told Al Manassa. “Our homes are gone, and we are living in tents. Yet they are still telling us to flee and threatening to kill us. We are tired of this life. No one knows where to go or if there is anywhere safe left.”
Israeli forces did not give the displaced families enough time to leave. An artillery shell struck a group of young men near the Dawla area on Salah Al-Din Street in Zeitoun, killing three people; their bodies were taken to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital.
Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told Al Manassa that an Israeli aircraft also struck a tent sheltering a displaced family on Kashko Street, east of Zeitoun, outside areas under the Israeli occupation army’s direct control. “We recovered the body of a young woman and evacuated two wounded people, while three others remain missing,” he said.
Basal appealed to the International Committee of the Red Cross and international organizations to intervene and secure safe access for rescue crews searching for the missing.
Meanwhile, eyewitnesses told Al Manassa that Israeli military vehicles had begun advancing westward into Zeitoun from areas under the army’s control, backed by heavy artillery fire and gunfire.
A young man was also shot dead by the occupation army near the Yellow Line in the northwestern Gaza Strip, according to a source with the Palestinian Red Crescent’s ambulance service.
In central Gaza, Israeli warplanes destroyed two separate residential buildings south of Deir Al-Balah after residents received phone calls ordering them to evacuate. A journalist in the area told Al Manassa that a resident of the Al-Sitt Amira area received a call ordering the evacuation of neighboring homes. Less than 20 minutes later, a warplane destroyed a three-story residential building with two missiles.
The same scene was repeated in the Al-Matahin area near the Kissufim crossing, where an airstrike completely destroyed another home following a similar phone warning.
A medical source at Nasser Medical Complex told Al Manassa that in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, an 11-year-old girl was killed by a bullet that struck her in the neck while she was near her family’s tent southwest of the city.
