Israeli strikes on Gaza City kill at least 50 people

More than 50 people are reported to have been killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza City this weekend.

At least 24 people were killed in an air raid on houses in the Al-Shati refugee camp, Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run government media office, said on Saturday. He added than an additional 18 people had died in a strike in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood.

Ten more people were killed in overnight strikes in Gaza City’s Sabra and Nuseirat neighborhoods, the Palestinian Authority’s state-run Wafa news agency reported on Sunday.

The Israeli military confirmed the strikes in a brief statement in which it said the targets had been “Hamas military infrastructure sites.”

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said that “nowhere is safe in Gaza,” in a post on X on Sunday.

“This blatant disregard of humanitarian law must stop,” the UNRWA said, pointing out that 69 percent of buildings in which displaced families are sheltering have either been damaged or directly hit by Israeli air strikes since the beginning of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which was prompted by the Hamas militant group’s Oct. 7 attack.

Saturday’s air strikes on Gaza coincided with a major anti-government protest in Tel Aviv, where tens of thousands gathered to demand Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resignation.

Protesters waving Israeli flags criticized the governing right-wing coalition’s handling of the war and its failure to secure the return of the captives taken by Hamas nearly nine months ago.

In a statement to the Israel Hayom newspaper on Sunday, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the world had lost confidence in the country’s government and it was time to “end the fighting with an agreement under which all the abductees will be returned.”