GAZA: Gaza’s Hamas-run interior ministry said an Israeli air strike on a police vehicle Sunday (Mar 15) killed nine officers in the centre of the Palestinian territory, updating an earlier hospital toll of eight.
The strike came as a Hamas delegation was due to meet with Egyptian officials in Cairo, according to a source from the Palestinian Islamist movement.
Gaza’s civil defence agency had also reported another four people killed in an earlier Israeli strike.
When asked by AFP about both incidents, the Israeli military said it was looking into the reports.
The Gaza interior ministry, which operates under Hamas authority, accused the Israeli military of committing a “heinous crime this afternoon when it targeted a police vehicle carrying several officers and personnel in the central governorate”.
“The attack resulted in the killing of nine officers and personnel,” it said in a statement, listing the victims, among them the police chief for the central governorate, Colonel Iyad Abu Yousef.
Earlier, th Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir el-Balah said it had received the bodies of “eight martyrs” killed in the strike on the town of Zawaida in central Gaza.
Hamas condemned the incident, saying: “This treacherous crime reflects the truce face of the occupation and its exposed policy aimed at continuing the war of genocide and deepening the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip.”