An Israeli airstrike on a house in Jabalia, Gaza, has killed Mohammed Morsi, the deputy director of the Gaza Civil Emergency Service, along with four members of his family, according to local health officials.
The Civil Emergency Service stated that Morsi’s death brings the total number of its personnel killed by Israeli strikes since October 7 to 83.
Residents in the area reported that Israeli forces also destroyed several homes in Gaza City’s Zeitoun suburb, located around 5 kilometres from Jabalia.
Medical teams said they were unable to respond to desperate calls from residents trapped inside their homes, many of whom were wounded.
“We hear constant bombing in Zeitoun. We know they are blowing up houses, and we can’t sleep because of the explosions. The roaring of tanks sounds close, and the drones never stop circling,” said a resident of Gaza City who lives about a kilometre away from the affected area.
As the violence intensifies, Israel and Hamas continue to blame each other for the failure of ceasefire negotiations.
Mediators from Qatar, Egypt, and the United States have been working to broker a truce, but the efforts have been unsuccessful. The US is reportedly preparing a new proposal, though the likelihood of a breakthrough remains slim due to significant differences between the two sides.
Amid the ongoing conflict, the United Nations, in partnership with local health authorities, has extended a vaccination campaign aimed at protecting children in southern Gaza from polio. The campaign, which is set to move to northern Gaza, seeks to vaccinate 640,000 children following the first confirmed case of polio in the region in 25 years.
Limited pauses in the fighting have allowed the effort to proceed, with UN officials reporting that they have reached more than half of the children in southern and central Gaza in the first two stages of the campaign. A second round of vaccinations will be required in four weeks.
The latest wave of violence in the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict began on October 7 when Hamas launched a large-scale attack on Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages, according to Israeli authorities.
In response, Israel launched an extensive military operation in Gaza, which has since resulted in the deaths of more than 40,900 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The conflict has displaced nearly the entire population of 2.3 million people, triggered a hunger crisis, and led to accusations of genocide against Israel at the World Court, allegations that Israel denies.
The Palestinian health ministry does not differentiate between combatants and civilians in its casualty reports, but local health officials claim that most of the fatalities have been civilians.
Israel, which has lost 340 soldiers in the conflict, maintains that at least a third of the Palestinian deaths are militants from Hamas and other groups.
