Israeli air strikes on Gaza killed 27 people on Wednesday (November 19, 2025), officials in the Strip said, with Israel and Hamas each accusing the other of violating the fragile ceasefire in the Palestinian territory.

The strikes were among the deadliest in Gaza since the truce entered into force last month, and came as Israel also announced a string of attacks targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon in spite of a nearly year-long ceasefire there.

Fourteen people were killed on Wednesday in Gaza City in the north and 13 in the Khan Yunis area in the south, according to the territory’s civil defence agency, which operates under Hamas authority. Two hospitals contacted by AFP gave the same toll.

The Israeli military said it was striking Hamas after militants opened fire towards an area where troops were operating in the south in “violation of the ceasefire agreement”.

Hamas denied the accusation and denounced the attacks as a “dangerous escalation” that could jeopardise the truce, which has largely held since October 10 despite flare-ups.

Ahraf Abu Sultan, 50, told AFP he had returned to his home in Gaza City with his family on Sunday, after being displaced in the south for a year.

“We barely managed to repair one room in our destroyed house to try and settle down just two days ago, and the bombing and death has started again. They don’t even give us a chance to breathe,” he said.

Fellow Gaza City resident Nivine Ahmed said she had been chatting with a neighbour when Israel’s bombings “turned everything upside down in a second”.

“We heard the sound of explosions and saw the smoke rising. People were running and the ambulance sirens were wailing, carrying away the martyrs,” she said.

“Next time the missile could fall on us.”

Trump peace plan

Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by both sides.

The highest daily toll registered since the truce took effect was on October 29, when more than 100 people were killed in Israeli strikes, according to civil defence figures and data received by AFP from five Gaza hospitals.

Israel has carried out repeated strikes against what it says are Hamas targets during the ceasefire, resulting in the death of more than 280 Palestinians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

The truce is based on a U.S.-brokered deal that also included the return to Israel of the last 48 hostages held by militants.

While all the living hostages were handed over early in the ceasefire, the process of returning the dead has been slower, and the bodies of three hostages still remain in Gaza.

The implementation of the second stage of U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan has yet to be agreed, particularly as it concerns disarming Hamas, establishing a transitional authority and deploying an international stabilisation force.

The UN Security Council voted on Monday in favour of a U.S.-drafted resolution endorsing Mr. Trump’s plan, though Hamas rejected the resolution as failing to meet Palestinians’ “political and humanitarian demands”.

The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people.

Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza has killed at least 69,513 people, according to figures from the health ministry that the UN considers reliable.

Lebanon strikes, Syria visit

Israel also conducted several strikes in southern Lebanon on Wednesday.

The military said it targeted Hezbollah weapons storage facilities in several towns, and accused the Iran-backed group of trying to rebuild its capabilities.

The Israeli military has kept up frequent air strikes in Lebanon in spite of a ceasefire sealed last November that sought to end more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah.

The raids came a day after 13 people were killed in a strike that Israel said targeted Hamas members in a Palestinian refugee camp in the south of the country — the deadliest attack in Lebanon since the truce came into effect.

Also on Wednesday, Israel’s top leaders visited Israeli troops stationed inside Syrian territory in a buffer zone intended to separate the two countries’ forces.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told troops that their presence was of “immense importance” to Israel’s security.

The visit was sharply condemned by Damascus, which called it “a serious violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

Published – November 20, 2025 07:25 am IST

Israel announced on Saturday (August 16, 2025) that it is preparing to move Palestinians from combat zones to southern Gaza as plans move ahead for a military offensive in some of the territory’s most populated areas.

The Israeli military body in charge of humanitarian aid to Gaza, COGAT, said the supply of tents to the territory would resume on Sunday. The military said it had no comment on when the mass movement of Palestinians would begin, but Defence Minister Israel Katz said on social media that “we are now in the stage of discussions to finalise the plan to defeat Hamas in Gaza.”

Meanwhile, anxious families of Israeli hostages called for a “nationwide day of stoppage” in Israel on Sunday to express growing frustration over 22 months of war.

Families of hostages fear the coming offensive further endangers the 50 hostages remaining in Gaza, just 20 of them thought to still be alive. They and other Israelis were horrified by the recent release of videos showing emaciated hostages speaking under duress and pleading for help and food.

The families and supporters have pressed the government for a deal to stop the war — a call that some former Israeli army and intelligence chiefs have made as well in recent weeks.

A group representing the families has urged Israelis into the streets on Sunday. “Across the country, hundreds of citizen-led initiatives will pause daily life and join the most just and moral struggle: the struggle to bring all 50 hostages home,” it said in a statement.

“I want to believe that there is hope, and it will not come from above, it will come only from us,” said Dana Silberman Sitton, sister of Shiri Bibas and aunt of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, who were killed in captivity.

She spoke at a weekly rally in Tel Aviv, along with Pushpa Joshi, sister of kidnapped Nepalese hostage Bipin Joshi, a student seized from a kibbutz.

“I miss my best friend,” Ms. Pushpa said.

Airstrike kills a baby girl and her parents

An Israeli airstrike in Gaza killed a baby girl and her parents on Saturday, Nasser hospital officials and witnesses said. Motasem al-Batta, his wife and the girl were killed in their tent in the crowded Muwasi area.

“Two and a half months, what has she done?” neighbor Fathi Shubeir asked, sweating as temperatures in the shattered territory soared above 90° Fahrenheit (32° Celsius). “They are civilians in an area designated safe.”

Israel’s military said it couldn’t comment on the strike without more details. It said it is dismantling Hamas’ military capabilities and takes precautions not to harm civilians.

Muwasi is one of the heavily populated areas in Gaza where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel plans to widen the coming military offensive, along with Gaza City and “central camps” — an apparent reference to the built-up Nuseirat and Bureij camps in central Gaza.

Israel may be using the threat to pressure Hamas into releasing more hostages taken in its Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the war.

Elsewhere, an official at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said it received the bodies of six people who were killed in the Zikim area of northern Gaza, as well as four people killed in shelling.

11 more deaths related to malnutrition

Another 11 malnutrition-related deaths occurred in Gaza over the past 24 hours, the territory’s Health Ministry said Saturday, with one child among them. That brings malnutrition-related deaths during the war to 251.

The United Nations is warning that levels of starvation and malnutrition in Gaza are at their highest since the war began. Palestinians are drinking contaminated water as diseases spread, while some Israeli leaders continue to talk openly about the mass relocation of people from Gaza.

A 20-year old Palestinian woman described as being in a “state of severe physical deterioration” died Friday after being transferred from Gaza to Italy for treatment, the hospital said Saturday.

The U.N. and partners say getting food and other aid into the territory of over 2 million people, and then on to distribution points, remains highly challenging with Israeli restrictions and pressure from crowds of hungry Palestinians.

The U.N. human rights office says at least 1,760 people were killed while seeking aid between May 27 and Wednesday. It says 766 were killed along routes of supply convoys and 994 in the vicinity of “non-U.N. militarized sites,” a reference to the Israeli-backed and U.S.-supported Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which since May has been the primary distributor of aid in Gaza.

US stops visitor visas for people from Gaza The U.S. State Department on Saturday said all visitor visas for people from Gaza are being stopped while a review is carried out of how “a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas” were issued in recent days.

The Hamas-led attack in 2023 killed around 1,200 people in Israel. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed 61,897 people in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry, which does not specify how many were fighters or civilians but says around half were women and children.

The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals. The U.N. and independent experts consider it the most reliable source on casualties. Israel disputes its figures but has not provided its own.

Published – August 17, 2025 03:55 am IST

A Palestinian woman looks out of her window after an Israeli strike on the Gaza Strip in Rafah on Saturday, Oct. 21, 2023.
| Photo Credit:
AP

Hezbollah’s escalating attacks on Israel risk “dragging Lebanon into a war”, Israel’s military said Sunday, after renewed cross-border exchanges of fire that have raised fears of a wider conflict.

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah is allied with Hamas, which touched off the latest violence with a bloody October 7 rampage in Israel that killed at least 1,400 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli officials.

Israel has retaliated with relentless strikes on the Iran-backed Hamas in the Gaza Strip that have killed more than 4,300 Palestinians, also mainly civilians.

It has also exchanged fire with Hezbollah across its northern border, with Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Jonathan Conricus accusing the group of a dangerous escalation.

“Hezbollah… is dragging Lebanon into a war that it will gain nothing from, but stands to lose a lot,” Conricus said.

“Hezbollah is playing a very, very dangerous game. They’re escalating the situation. We see more and more attacks every day,” he said.

– AFP