GAZA STRIP, PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES - Gaza medics and rescuers on Monday said Israeli strikes on several homes killed at least 18 people, as Hamas claimed it had ample resources to sustain its fight nearly a year into the war.
The latest strikes came as Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned that prospects for a halt in fighting with Hezbollah fighters along the Lebanon border were dimming, yet again raising fears of a wider regional conflagration.
Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told AFP during an interview in Istanbul on Sunday: “The resistance has a high ability to continue.” “There were martyrs and there were sacrifices... but in return there was an accumulation of experiences and the recruitment of new generations into the resistance.”
His comments came less than a week after Gallant told journalists that Hamas, whose October 7 attack triggered the war, “no longer exists” as a military formation in Gaza.
Deadly fighting raged on in the Gaza Strip on Monday, with survivors seen searching through the debris of crushed buildings following a strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
Ten people were killed and 15 others were wounded when an air strike hit the home of the Al-Qassas family in Nuseirat on Monday morning, a medic at Al-Awda hospital, where the bodies were brought, told AFP.
“My house was hit while we were sleeping without any prior warning. There are many martyrs, among them the sons of my family and my little grandsons,” said Rashed al-Qassas, a surviving family member. Gaza’s civil defence agency said six Palestinians were killed in a similar air strike during the night on a house belonging to the Bassal family in Gaza City’s Zeitun neighbourhood, a regular target of Israeli military raids since the war began.
Two people were killed in another overnight air strike in Rafah that targeted a house belonging to the Abu Shaar family, the agency said.
