GAZA’S CIVIL DEFENCE agency has said that overnight Israeli strikes across the Palestinian territory killed at least 18 people, including four displaced individuals who had sought refuge in a tent.

Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told reporters that rescuers working through the night recovered the bodies of 18 people.

Bassal added that dozens more were injured in the “ongoing aggression and Israeli aerial and artillery bombardment” across Gaza.

The death toll from the overnight strike included at least three children, Bassal said.

He said that four people were killed in an Israeli air strike targeting a house in central Gaza City.

Another four were killed, and eight injured, when an Israeli missile hit a tent sheltering dozens of displaced people in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

Bassal said that Deir el-Balah’s mayor, Diab al-Jaro, was killed in a similar strike yesterday.

The Israeli military later claimed responsibility for that attack, saying Jaro had been “an operative in Hamas’s military wing”.

The IDF confirmed today that it had carried out strikes in the Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia areas.

“The troops struck dozens of terrorists from both the air and ground and additional terrorists were apprehended” in Beit Hanoun, it said.

“In Beit Lahia, troops eliminated terrorists and located and dismantled large quantities of weapons, including explosives and dozens of grenades,” Israel’s military said.

The statement did not specify when these operations took place.

Separately, the military reported targeting a clinic in northern Gaza, saying Hamas used it as a “command and control centre” and storage site for weapons.