ISRAELI forces continued lethal operations in Gaza and intensified repression across the occupied West Bank yesterday amid repeated ceasefire violations in the Strip and a widening campaign of settler violence.
In Gaza, Israeli airstrikes and fire killed and wounded civilians across multiple areas for a third consecutive day.
Two young men, Walid Hassan Darwish and Yasser Mohammad Abu Shahada, were killed when Israeli aircraft struck a civilian gathering east of the al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza.
Earlier, six Palestinians, including a pregnant woman, were injured when warplanes bombed a tent sheltering displaced families in al-Mawasi, west of Khan Younis.
Israeli helicopters also struck Rafah, while naval vessels fired on Palestinian fishing boats off Gaza City.
Ground forces opened fire in eastern Khan Younis, and demolitions were reported in Rafah alongside tank fire near the Morag Axis.
Hamas said the attacks constituted ‘terrorism’ and a ‘clear breach’ of the ceasefire, accusing Israel of systematically evading its obligations.
The movement called on mediators and guarantor states to exert urgent pressure to halt what it described as the ‘rampage’ of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and demanded an immediate transition to the second phase of the ceasefire, including the opening of the Rafah crossing and the operation of a national administrative committee in Gaza.
Israel has violated the ceasefire for more than 110 consecutive days.
Gaza’s health authorities rejected Israeli claims that high birth registrations in 2025 disprove genocide.
Dr Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Ministry of Health, said official data recorded roughly 50,000 live births last year, an 11 per cent decline from pre-war levels.
He cited sharp rises in low birth weight deliveries, premature births, stillbirths and neonatal deaths, and a doubling of congenital malformations.
Inflated birth statistics, he said, were ‘a blatant political attempt to deny the crime of genocide’.
In the occupied West Bank, tens of thousands of Palestinians performed Friday prayers at the Aqsa Mosque under heavy Israeli restrictions.
Around 70,000 worshippers gathered despite road closures, ID checks and the routine barring of West Bank Palestinians without permits, measures that have intensified since the start of the war on Gaza.
Elsewhere, Jewish settlers escalated attacks on Palestinian communities, targeting homes, farmland and livelihoods.
In Masafer Yatta, toxic chemicals were sprayed over wheat and barley fields in Wadi al-Rakhim, while tents were vandalised in the northern Jordan Valley and livestock targeted.
Settlers fired on homes in Qusra, south of Nablus, threw stones at vehicles near the Yitzhar junction, and blocked access roads to Bedouin communities.
Israeli forces simultaneously launched coordinated raids across the West Bank.
Checkpoints were erected and assaults reported in al-Khalil, Jenin, Ramallah, Nablus, Bethlehem and Salfit, with homes stormed, youths beaten and arrests carried out in towns and refugee camps.
