Gaza rescuers say Israeli strikes kill 50 people

Members of a delegation of UN Ambassadors visit a memorial for the victims of the Nova Festival attack by Palestinian militants on October 7, 2024, at the site of the attack near Kibbutz Reim in southern Israel on April 27, 2025. — Photo by Agence France-Presse

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes on Sunday had killed 50 people in the territory.

Israel resumed its military campaign in the Gaza Strip on March 18. A ceasefire agreement that had largely halted the fighting for two months collapsed over disagreements with Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose 2023 attack triggered the war.

“Fifty martyrs have been counted as a result of continuous Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip since dawn,” civil defence official Mohammed al-Mughayyir told AFP.

They included nine people killed in a strike on a group of civilians in the east of Gaza City in the north of the territory.

The hospital in the southern town of Khan Yunis said it had received the bodies of seven people killed in a strike on a house.

The hospital in al-Awda said it had received four bodies and several people wounded from a strike on a cafe near the central Bureij camp.

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The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza on Sunday raised its overall death toll to 52,243 people since the war began, after hundreds of missing people were confirmed dead.

The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Militants also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel says its renewed military campaign aims to force Hamas to free the remaining captives.