Israeli strikes kill at least 13 people across Gaza

Israeli strikes killed at least 13 people across Gaza on Thursday, the territory’s civil defense agency said, including an employee of the French charity Doctors Without Borders.

Civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal, whose rescue agency operates under Hamas authority, said 10 people were killed in several air raids in central Gaza, while two more were killed in the south, and one child died in a strike in Gaza City, the territory’s largest urban center.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir el-Balah reported receiving nine bodies after multiple strikes in the area.

An AFP photographer saw several corpses, some wrapped in white shrouds, in the hospital morgue as relatives mourned nearby.

Among the dead was 26-year-old Omar al-Hayek, a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) staff member.

He was killed in a strike on a group of civilians in central Deir al-Balah, according to the hospital and his family.

“We received word that some of our staff had been injured and taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital,” said Karin Huster, head of the MSF medical team in Gaza.

“When we arrived, we discovered that one of our colleagues had been killed, and four others wounded,” she told AFP.

“The consequences will be tragic for their families and for our team. Enough killings -- whether targeted or not, this is unacceptable.”

Nasser Hospital also confirmed the two deaths in the south, in the area of Khan Younis.

The nearly two-year war in Gaza broke out after Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign since then has killed 66,225 Palestinians in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the health ministry, which the United Nations considers reliable.