Gaza’s Hamas-run interior ministry said an Israeli air strike on a police vehicle Sunday killed nine officers in the centre of the Palestinian territory, updating an earlier hospital toll of eight.
The strike came as a Hamas delegation was due to meet with Egyptian officials in Cairo, according to a source from the Palestinian Islamist movement.
Gaza’s civil defence agency had also reported another four people killed in an earlier Israeli strike.
When asked by AFP about both incidents, the Israeli military said it was looking into the reports.
The Gaza interior ministry, which operates under Hamas authority, accused the Israeli military of committing a “heinous crime this afternoon when it targeted a police vehicle carrying several officers and personnel in the central governorate”.
“The attack resulted in the killing of nine officers and personnel,” it said in a statement, listing the victims, among them the police chief for the central governorate, Colonel Iyad Abu Yousef.
Earlier, th Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir el-Balah said it had received the bodies of “eight martyrs” killed in the strike on the town of Zawaida in central Gaza.
Hamas condemned the incident, saying: “This treacherous crime reflects the truce face of the occupation and its exposed policy aimed at continuing the war of genocide and deepening the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip.”
– Ceasefire violations –
Violence has persisted in the war-shattered Palestinian territory despite a ceasefire which came into effect on October 10, with both Israel and Hamas regularly accusing each other of violations.
Earlier on Sunday, Gaza’s civil defence agency which operates as a rescue force under Hamas authority said an Israeli strike killed four people in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the centre of the territory.
In a statement, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem condemned the bombing as “a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement”.
The latest deaths came as a Hamas source told AFP that a delegation in Cairo had met with Bulgarian politician Nickolay Mladenov, named high representative for Gaza under US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace.
The board was established after the Trump administration, with longtime mediators Qatar and Egypt, negotiated a ceasefire to halt two years of devastating war in Gaza.
The Cairo delegation, headed by Hamas official Nizar Rayyan, “demanded an immediate halt to all violations and called on Israel to implement the second phase of the ceasefire agreement and open the Gaza crossings”, the source said.
At the start of the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, Israel announced the closure of all crossing points into Gaza as a “security” measure.
But on Sunday, it said it would partially reopen the Rafah crossing on the border between the Palestinian territory and Egypt.
“The Rafah Crossing will reopen for movement in both directions starting this coming Wednesday , for limited movement of people only,” COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry agency in charge of civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said in a statement.
It had previously reopened the Kerem Shalom crossing in the territory’s south to allow for the “gradual entry of humanitarian aid”.
Gaza’s health ministry, which operates under Hamas authority, says at least 663 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the truce.
The Israeli military says at least five of its soldiers have been killed in the same period since October 10.
Media restrictions and limited access in Gaza have prevented AFP from independently verifying casualty figures or freely covering the fighting.
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