Hamas-run civil defense agency says eight killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza

The Hamas-controlled Gaza civil defense agency says Israeli strikes killed at least eight people, including a 17-year-old who died in an attack on a southern town.

The figures cannot be independently verified and do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal tells AFP that “at least eight people have been killed and dozens injured in Israeli airstrikes since dawn.”

Bassal says three people were killed when a group of civilians was struck in Gaza City’s Zeitun neighborhood, and three more in a strike that hit a residential building in the central Bureij refugee camp.

Two people died in the southern Khan Younis area, Bassal says, including a 17-year-old boy in a strike on the town of Khuzaa, and another person killed when Israeli forces hit fishing boats off the coast.

In a separate incident near Khan Younis, a strike wounded at least 12 people, most of them children, in Al-Mawasi, the civil defense spokesman adds.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.