Israeli air strike on declared humanitarian zone in Gaza kills 11

Rescuers said among the dead was the head of the Palestinian territory’s police force and his deputy.

LAST UPDATE | 2 Jan

AN ISRAELI STRIKE on a declared humanitarian zone in southern Gaza killed eleven people overnight.

Rescuers said among the dead was the head of the Palestinian territory’s police force and his deputy.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said two other Israeli strikes elsewhere in the territory today killed 14 Palestinians.

The Israeli military confirmed it had carried out the overnight strike on the area of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, which it said targeted Hamas deputy police chief Hussam Shahwan over his alleged role in planning attacks against Israeli troops.

The civil defence agency said Shahwan was among 11 people killed in the strike, which according to the rescuers and authorities in Gaza also left the commander of the police force, Mahmud Salah, dead.

The Israeli military, which has not commented on Salah’s death, said his deputy Shahwan “was responsible for developing intelligence assessments in coordination with… Hamas’s military wing” in attacks on Israeli forces in Gaza.

Philippe Lazzarini, chief of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said that the strike on the Al-Mawasi humanitarian area showed that there was no place safe in Gaza.

“Another remainder that there is no humanitarian zone let alone a ‘safe zone’,” Lazzarini posted on X.

“Enough misleading and killing of civilians.”

#Gaza #Ceasefirenow pic.twitter.com/kNjMG10EEP
— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) January 2, 2025

Meanwhile, World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has hit out at the ‘excruciatingly slow’ pace of medical evacuations from Gaza.

“Only 5383 patients have been evacuated with support from WHO since October 2023, of which only 436 since the Rafah crossing was closed,” Tedros said in a statement.

“Over 12,000 people still need medical evacuation. At this rate, it would take 5-10 years to evacuate all these critically ill patients, including thousands of children. In the meantime, their conditions get worse and some die.”

“On 31 December 2024, 55 patients and 72 companions were evacuated to the UAE. We thank the United Arab Emirates government for their continued support – they have helped with the medical evacuation of over 1200 patients so far.”

Tedros concluded by urging Israel to increase the approval rate for medical evacuations, including no denials of child patients; expedite the process of approvals for medical evacuations; allow all possible corridors and border crossings to be used for safe medical evacuations.