Gaza's civil defense agency said Saturday, April 20, an overnight Israeli strike killed nine members of a Palestinian family, including six children, in the southern city of Rafah.
"Nine martyrs, including six children, were pulled out from the rubble after Israeli air forces struck a house of the Radwan family in Tal al-Sultan in Rafah," Gaza Civil Defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said in a statement. Five children aged one to seven and a 16-year-old girl were among the dead, along with two women and a man, according to the city's Al Najjar hospital.
Soon after the war in Gaza began on October 7, Israel told Palestinians living in the north of Gaza to move to "safe zones" in the territory's south such as Rafah. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since vowed to invade the city, where around 1.5 million people – more than half the territory's population – are sheltering. Israel has for two months threatened to send troops in against Hamas militants, but even without such an operation Rafah is under regular bombardment.
Also on Saturday, the Israeli army said its troops had killed 10 militants in an ongoing raid around Nur Shams, a refugee camp in the north of the occupied West Bank. The army said that over more than 40 hours it had "eliminated 10 terrorists" and made eight arrests around Nur Shams. It said eight soldiers and a police officer were wounded.
The Palestinian health ministry said it had confirmed 11 wounded in the Israeli raid, seven of them "wounded by live gunshots." It said a paramedic shot while trying to get to the wounded was among them. The health ministry said medics had been alerted to "a number of killed and injured" inside the camp, but said the army was "denying them access to tend to the wounded."
Israeli forces say their frequent raids target Palestinian militants, but civilians are often among the dead. On Friday the health ministry said 16-year-old Qais Fathi Nasrallah was killed by Israeli troops in the nearby Tulkarem refugee camp. The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said he died after being "shot in the head by Israeli live gunfire." It was unclear exactly when he died. A 30-year-old man, Salim Faisal Ghanem, was "killed by Israeli troops" on Friday in the Nur Shams camp, Wafa said.
Minister Muayad Shaaban, head of the Palestinian Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission, said residents were suffering from the "destruction of homes, shops, the electricity grid, the sewerage, the water network and infrastructure." Around 480 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops or settlers in the West Bank since the Hamas assault on Israel triggered the Gaza war, according to Palestinian official sources.