Israeli airstrikes killed at least 10 Palestinians and wounded several others near a school sheltering the displaced in the Gaza Strip on Monday, the latest Israeli violation of the U.S.-brokered cease-fire.
Before the strikes, some Palestinians had clashed with members of an Israeli-backed militia, who they said attacked the school in an attempt to abduct some people, medics and residents said.
In the midst of the clashes, east of the Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, Israeli drones fired two missiles into the area, killing at least 10 people and wounding several others, they added.
It was not immediately clear how many civilians had been killed in the strikes, which hit in a closely packed neighborhood of mostly displaced Palestinians.
Ahmed al-Maghazi, an eyewitness, said their area was attacked by members of the Israeli-backed militia who operate in the territory adjacent to where the Israeli forces are in control, before the militia opened fire.
"The residents tried to defend their homes, but the occupation forces targeted them directly," he told Reuters.
Later on Monday, a leader of one of the Israeli-backed militias said in a video, which Reuters couldn't immediately authenticate, that they killed some five Hamas members.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas, which brands those groups that operate in areas under Israeli control as "Israeli collaborators."
Earlier on Monday, an Israeli airstrike killed one Palestinian and wounded a child as they traveled on a motorbike in Gaza City, medics said.
Medics said that Israeli forces killed another Palestinian when they opened fire on a vehicle in central Gaza, taking Monday's death toll to at least 12.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment on any of the three incidents on Monday.
The Palestinian group Hamas, which has run Gaza since 2007, and Israel have traded blame over violations of the ceasefire that kicked off in October.
Since then, Israel continued violations of the agreement, with Gaza's Health Ministry reporting 713 Palestinians killed and 1,940 injured since the ceasefire.
The violence comes as Hamas has continued to resist relinquishing its weapons, a major obstacle in talks to implement the next steps in U.S. President Donald Trump's proposed peace plan for Gaza.
On Sunday, Hamas' armed wing said that discussing the group's disarmament before Israel fully implements the first phase of Trump's Gaza plan was an attempt to continue what it called a genocide against the Palestinian people.
Israeli war on Gaza, retaliating to a cross-border Hamas attack on southern Israel, killed more than 72,000 people, wounded over 172,000, and spread famine while displacing much of Gaza’s two million population. Israel’s brutal onslaught left the enclave largely in ruins, destroying about 90% of civilian infrastructure, with reconstruction costs estimated by the U.N. at around $70 billion.
