Israeli air strikes killed at least 25 people in Gaza on Wednesday, the enclave's Health Ministry said, after the army said its soldiers had been fired on earlier in the day.
Another 77 were wounded, several of them seriously, in the attacks targeting areas under Hamas control, the ministry added in a statement. The strikes are another test of the shaky ceasefire that took effect last month.
Israel's army said it began attacking Hamas targets across the Palestinian territory after “terrorists” fired at an area where its troops were operating in Khan Younis.
Hamas condemned the Israeli strikes as a dangerous escalation, and urged the US to “honour its stated commitments and exert immediate pressure on Israel to enforce the ceasefire and halt its attacks”.
Among the casualties were five people, including a woman and child, killed when the Israeli army bombed a building in the Zeitoun area of Gaza city, civil defence spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said.
Another bombing in the southern Al Mawasi area of Khan Younis killed three people and injured several others, while one person was killed and dozens injured in an Israeli drone strike on a group of civilians at an intersection on Salah Al Din Street in the Shujaiya area east of Gaza city, Mr Basal said.
An Israeli tank shelled a family home in the same area, killing one person and wounding several others.
Earlier on Wednesday, troops shot dead one person who crossed the yellow line in northern Gaza, the army said. The line demarcates the area to which Israeli troops have withdrawn in the first stage of the US-brokered ceasefire that began on October 10.
Israel has continued to carry out sporadic attacks in Gaza despite the ceasefire, killing at least 280 people and injuring more than 670, according to the latest figures released by the territory's health authorities on Wednesday.
The majority of those deaths occurred in two rounds of bombardment across the coastal strip after attacks on Israeli soldiers in southern Gaza that left three of them dead.
The overall Palestinian death toll in the war has risen to more than 69,513, with another 170,745 wounded, according to the health ministry, which includes civilians and combatants in its figures.
The war was caused by a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023 in which about 1,200 people were killed and about 250 taken hostage.
