Israeli air strikes across the Gaza Strip have killed at least 71 people, including the head of the enclave’s police force and his deputy, Palestinian authorities have said.
Israeli forces carried out more than 30 strikes on Thursday, including in the so-called humanitarian zone of al-Mawasi and northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, Gaza’s Government Media Office said.
“The Israeli air strikes targeted civilians and infrastructure in horrific crimes added to the occupation’s dark record,” the media office said in a statement.
Chief of Gaza’s police force, Mahmud Salah, and his deputy, Hussam Shahwan, were among 12 people killed in a strike on a tent encampment in al-Mawasi, a coastal area near the southern town of Khan Younis, medical sources told Al Jazeera.
Salah was a veteran officer who had spent 30 years in the force, serving six years as its chief.
Gaza’s Interior Ministry condemned the killings, saying the two police officers had been “performing their humanitarian and national duty in serving our people”.
It accused Israel of spreading “chaos” and deepening the “human suffering” in Gaza with the deadly strike.
A video clip from the aftermath of the attack, which also wounded about 15, showed people searching for survivors among burning tents, scattered debris, and washing lines where residents of the camp for displaced people had hung clothes to dry.
Reporting from Deir el-Balah in the centre of the Strip, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said the latest strikes marked “a very significant escalation”, with an additional attack on a gas station on the outskirts of the town killing nine people.
“The bodies were brought to Al-Aqsa [Martyrs] Hospital. They were … shredded to pieces due to that brutal strike and we saw the mothers … crying over the loss they have endured today,” he said.
Other Israeli air strikes killed at least 26 Palestinians, including six in the Interior Ministry headquarters in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, three at the Shati camp in the west of Gaza City, and at least seven in the Jabalia refugee camp in the north.
Later on Thursday, separate Israeli air strikes killed at least four people on Jalaa Street in downtown Gaza City and two in its Zeitoun district, medics said.
Another strike killed at least eight Palestinians in the central Gaza Strip. The dead were members of local committees that help secure aid convoys, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which received the bodies.
No warning
The Israeli military gave no warning for Thursday’s predawn attack on al-Mawasi, which has been hit relentlessly by Israeli warplanes, drones and artillery.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), decried the attack.
“As the year begins, we got reports of yet another attack on Al Mawasi with dozens of people killed [and] injured. Another reminder that there is no humanitarian zone let alone a ‘safe zone’ [in Gaza],” Lazzarini, said in a post on X. “Everyday without a ceasefire will bring more tragedy.”
Israeli forces have repeatedly targeted so-called “safe zones” in Gaza, attacking forcibly displaced families who had followed forced evacuation orders.
An attack on December 22 killed eight people, including two children. Earlier that month, on December 3, at least 20 people were killed in what Israel’s military claimed was the targeting of a Hamas official.
After Thursday’s attack, Israel’s military said it had conducted an intelligence-based strike and had eliminated Shahwan, whom it called the head of Hamas security forces in southern Gaza. It made no mention of Salah’s death.
Days earlier, Israeli tanks had advanced on al-Mawasi from the southern city of Rafah, forcing dozens of families to flee northward fearing imminent attack.
Prior to the attack on northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, Israeli forces issued orders for all residents to flee three targeted areas.
The warning was described as a “pre-anaesthesia before the attack” by the Israeli military’s Arabic language spokesman, Avichay Adraee.
“Once again, terrorist organisations are launching rockets from your area, which has been warned many times in the past,” he said in a post on social media.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that he authorised negotiators to continue talks in the Qatari capital Doha to secure a captive release deal after Israel and Hamas traded accusations recently over delaying an agreement.
Key mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been attempting to secure a lasting deal in indirect talks for months.
The toll from the first two days of 2025 takes the number of deaths in Gaza to more than 46,000 since Israel began its war on the enclave on October 7, 2023.
At least six babies have died of cold in recent days, as the forcibly displaced Palestinians across Gaza brave winter rains.
