A new wave of Israeli pre-dawn air strikes across Gaza City left at least nine Palestinians dead on Thursday, adding to a mounting civilian death toll as Israel expands its military operation and repeatedly violates a U.S.-brokered October ceasefire agreement. The attacks, which struck four separate residential apartment units in western and southern Gaza while most local residents were still asleep, wiped out an entire family in one targeted strike. Among the fatalities were five members of the Lubbad household: a father, mother, and their three young children. Only 10-year-old Hala Lubbad escaped the destruction of her home, walking away with only minor injuries from the collapse of the building.
Palestinian Civil Defence crews, who raced to the strike sites immediately after the attacks, described the aftermath as unprecedentedly catastrophic. “The scenes at the locations are difficult and horrifying,” the organization said in an official statement following the search and recovery operation. One of the targeted apartments caught fire moments after impact, trapping residents inside and slowing rescue efforts. Emergency workers pulled survivors and the remains of victims from piles of shattered concrete and twisted rebar, confronting harrowing conditions throughout the operation. Local Palestinian media outlets have confirmed that at least 15 additional people were injured in the strikes, many of them critically.
Thursday’s bombardment is part of a sharp escalation of Israeli military activity across the Gaza Strip that began earlier this month, breaking the relative lull in fighting that followed the October ceasefire deal. Data from Gaza’s Ministry of Health shows that Israeli forces have killed 119 Palestinians since the start of May, marking the highest single-month death toll recorded since November of last year. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has confirmed that the Israeli military is actively expanding its territorial control across Gaza, with ground forces already holding approximately 60 percent of the enclave and pushing toward a goal of seizing 70 percent of the territory by the end of the ongoing operation.
Parallel to the military expansion, Israeli forces have continued two policies that have deepened the humanitarian catastrophe facing Gaza’s 2.2 million residents: mass home demolitions in occupied areas and crippling restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid. The near-total blockade on critical supplies has pushed the enclave into a renewed, acute crisis marked by widespread food insecurity and extreme shortages of life-saving medical supplies. This week, Gaza’s Health Ministry issued an urgent warning that more than 4,000 Palestinians undergoing cancer treatment are at immediate risk of death due to the complete lack of chemotherapy drugs, radiation supplies, and other essential medications. Shortages of fuel, which power Gaza’s only power grid and emergency generators, have forced most hospitals to scale back or suspend critical services. Dialysis units, neonatal intensive care incubators, general intensive care wards, and medical testing laboratories are all at imminent risk of full shutdown across the enclave.
Gaza’s Government Media Office has documented more than 3,000 separate violations of the October ceasefire by Israeli military forces since the agreement went into effect. Palestinian health officials confirm that at least 936 Palestinians have been killed and more than 2,900 wounded in Israeli attacks across Gaza during the ceasefire period. Since the start of Israel’s full-scale military campaign in October 2023, the Palestinian Ministry of Health records that nearly 73,000 Palestinians have been killed, with an additional 170,000 wounded. Thousands more people remain unaccounted for, trapped and presumed dead under the rubble of thousands of destroyed homes and public buildings across the enclave.