10 dead in Israeli attack in Lebanon – DW – 17.08.2024

In the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, 15 members of a Palestinian family, including nine children, were killed in an Israeli air strike in the early hours of Saturday, according to civil defense rescue workers.

The attack hit a family's home in the Al-Zawaida neighborhood in central Gaza, civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal told AFP news agency.

“The Israeli attack on the Ajlah family home and their warehouse in Al-Zawaida left 15 people dead,” Bassal said, adding that nine of those killed were children.

The war between Israel and Hamas began when Hamas-led militants crossed the heavily guarded border from the Gaza Strip into Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

They also took around 250 hostages, more than 100 of whom were released during a week-long ceasefire in November. Around 110 hostages are believed to still be in the Gaza Strip, but Israeli authorities believe about a third of them are dead.

According to the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel's devastating retaliatory offensive.

The ministry makes no distinction between civilians and combatants, but the UN and numerous humanitarian organizations consider the casualty figures to be largely reliable.

Hamas is a Palestinian Islamist group that is classified as a terrorist organization by the EU, the US, Germany and several other countries.