Gaza’s civil defence agency said that Israeli forces killed 11 members of a single Palestinian family when they fired on a bus, after the military confirmed it had targeted a vehicle that crossed the so-called ‘yellow line’.
“Civil defence crews were able to recover 11 bodies following the Israeli occupation’s targeting of a bus carrying displaced persons east of the Zeitoun neighbourhood yesterday,” Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for the agency, said yesterday.
Bassal said the victims were members of the Abu Shabaan family and were killed while ‘trying to check on their home’ in the Zeitoun neighbourhood.
The Israeli military said a vehicle had been identified crossing the ‘yellow line’, the boundary behind which Israeli troops are stationed under the ceasefire agreement with Hamas.
“The troops fired warning shots towards the suspicious vehicle, but the vehicle continued to approach the troops in a way that caused an imminent threat to them,” the military said in a statement.
“The troops opened fire to remove the threat, in accordance with the agreement.”
The ceasefire between Israeli forces and Hamas is now in its second week, but several incidents have been reported since it began, with the military saying its troops fired at individuals who approached or crossed the ‘yellow line’.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have returned to northern Gaza in search of their homes since the ceasefire began, often struggling to find them amid the vast devastation left by more than two years of war.
Several Gazans said they were unable to locate their houses – or even familiar landmarks – in neighbourhoods now buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings and debris.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt will remain closed until further notice, adding its reopening will depend on Hamas handing over bodies of deceased hostages.
Netanyahu’s statement came shortly after the Palestinian embassy in Egypt announced that the Rafah crossing, the main gateway for Gazans to leave and enter the enclave, would reopen tomorrow for entry into Gaza.
Hamas said later yesterday it handed over two more hostage bodies, meaning 12 out of 28 bodies will have been handed over to Israel under a US-brokered ceasefire and hostage deal agreed between Israel and Hamas last week.
The dispute over the return of bodies underlines the fragility of the ceasefire and still has the potential to upset the deal along with other major issues that are included in US president Donald Trump’s 20-point plan to end the war.
As part of the deal, Hamas released all 20 living Israeli hostages it had been holding for two years, in return for almost 2,000 Palestinian detainees and convicted prisoners jailed in Israel.
But Israel says that Hamas has been too slow to hand over bodies of deceased hostages it still holds. Hamas has so far returned 12 of 28 bodies and says that locating some of the bodies amid the vast destruction in Gaza will take time.
The deal requires Israel to return 360 bodies of Palestinians for the deceased Israeli hostages and so far it has handed over 15 bodies in return for each Israeli body it has received.
After cutting off all supplies for 11 weeks in March, Israel increased aid into Gaza in July, scaling it up further since the ceasefire. Around 560 tonnes of food had entered Gaza per day on average since the truce.
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