Israel said on Tuesday it killed a senior terrorist commander inside a humanitarian zone in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian authorities also confirmed that several people were killed and others injured in an Israeli attack in another area of Gaza.
Israel’s army says it has killed a senior commander of the terrorist organisation Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in an attack inside a humanitarian zone in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
Ahmed Aish Salame al-Hashash was the head of the group’s rocket and missile unit in the Rafah area of Gaza and responsible for firing rockets from an area designated as a humanitarian zone into Israeli territory, the Israeli military said.
“At the time of the strike, al-Hashash was embedded and operating inside the Humanitarian Area in Khan Yunis,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) wrote on X.
The army said it had monitored the area from the air before the attack to minimize the danger to civilians.
The Khan Younis humanitarian zone is located in the south of the coastal area.
Israel’s army reportedly killed al-Hashash there on Monday.
It was not possible to independently verify the claims.
Meanwhile, several people were killed and others injured in an Israeli attack in the Gaza Strip’s al-Bureij area, the Palestinian Civil Defence Authority reported on Tuesday.
A total of six residential buildings were affected in the attack, it said.
The exact number of dead and injured was not initially reported.
The IDF said, “Reports regarding harm to uninvolved civilians as a result of the strikes are being investigated.”
The Israeli Air Force “struck terrorist infrastructure sites in the area of Bureij from which terrorists were preparing to fire anti-tank missiles and carry out sniper fire at IDF troops,” it said.
The Israeli airstrikes aimed to “end an immediate threat posed to troops in the area,” the IDF said.
The Gaza war was triggered by the unprecedented massacre of more than 1,200 people killed by fighters from Hamas, the PIJ and other armed Palestinian groups in Israel on Oct. 7.
Israel responded with massive airstrikes and a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip.
According to the Hamas-controlled health authority, a further 26 people were killed in fighting in the Gaza Strip within 24 hours.
Since the beginning of the war, a total of 41,252 people have been killed in the coastal area.
The figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
A month ago, the Israeli army announced that “more than 17,000 terrorists” had been killed in the Gaza war.
None of these figures can be independently verified.