Israeli fire kills eight Palestinians in Gaza Strip and three in West Bank

Israeli fire has killed eight people in the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, Palestinian officials said, even as a fragile ceasefire with Hamas has largely held.

Israeli strikes have killed dozens of Palestinians who the army says had approached its troops or entered unauthorised areas in violation of the January truce.

Israel last week suspended supplies of goods and electricity to the territory of more than two million Palestinians as it tries to pressure the militant group to accept an extension of the first phase of their ceasefire, which ended on March 1.

Israel wants Hamas to release half of the remaining hostages in return for a promise to negotiate a lasting truce.

Hamas instead wants to start negotiations on the ceasefire’s more difficult second phase, which would see the release of remaining hostages from Gaza, the withdrawal of Israeli forces and a lasting peace. Hamas is believed to have 24 living hostages and the bodies of 35 others.

Rafaat Sabah, the owner of the garage, said the attack was not the first. He said settlers had broken into the premises previously and stolen oil, tools and other things. This time they set fire to cars belonging to his customers, he said.

The Israeli military said it is investigating the incident.

Marwan Sabah, head of the Umm Safa village council, said settlers have recently brought livestock to graze on village lands with the aim of eventually taking them over.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said three Palestinians, including a 58-year-old woman, were killed by Israeli fire in the volatile West Bank city of Jenin on Tuesday.

The Israeli military said troops killed two militants in an exchange of fire in Jenin and arrested 10 others. It said its forces eliminated a third militant who had fired at them during the operation and destroyed two vehicles loaded with weapons.

Israel launched a large-scale military operation centred on Jenin shortly after reaching a fragile ceasefire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip in January. Troops have destroyed homes and infrastructure, and tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled their homes across the northern West Bank.

The ministry said on Tuesday that rescuers have also retrieved 32 bodies from under the rubble.

The four killed included three brothers hit by a drone strike in the central Gaza Strip on Monday and a woman killed by a drone strike in the southern city of Rafah on Tuesday, the ministry said.

The latest deaths take the overall Palestinian death toll from the war to 48,503. More than 110,000 people have been injured, according to the ministry.

The ministry says women and children make up most of the dead but does not distinguish between fighters and civilians in its toll. Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on October 7 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251 people.

Meanwhile, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Sharren Haskel, said on Tuesday that deadly sectarian violence in neighbouring Syria amounts to “ethnic cleansing” and that Israel is working to prevent a threat along its border from Syria’s new “jihadi regime”.

“Israel is committed to preventing what we saw in Syria this weekend from happening on our border,” she said at a news conference in Jerusalem.

Since Islamist-led insurgents ousted Mr Assad in December, Israel has voiced concerns that the group could seize Syrian military assets and use them against it, or that instability could spill over into its territory.

Israel has deployed troops inside a buffer zone and vowed to prevent the new Syrian forces from entering the area south of Damascus.

On Tuesday, the Israeli military said its fighter jets struck military targets in southern Syria, including radars and equipment.

The Israeli prime minister’s office announced on Tuesday that Israel will release five Lebanese detainees as a “gesture” to the new Lebanese president. The release follows a meeting Tuesday in Lebanon between representatives from Israel, Lebanon, France, and the US.

Elsewhere, China, Iran and Russia held joint naval drills in the Middle East as tensions rise between Tehran and the US.

The joint drills held on Tuesday, called the Maritime Security Belt 2025, took place in the Gulf of Oman near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all crude oil traded worldwide passes.

The area around the strait in the past has seen Iran seize commercial ships and launch suspected attacks in the time since President Donald Trump first unilaterally withdrew America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.

This is the fifth year the three countries took part in the drills, which come after a months-long Iranian drill that followed a direct Israeli attack on the country, targeting its air defences and sites associated with its ballistic missile programme.