Israeli tank shelling and airstrikes killed at least 18 people, including four children, in Gaza on Wednesday, Palestinian officials said, as Israel halts the passage of patients through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.
The Israeli military said its tanks fired on Gaza and airstrikes were launched after a gunman shot at Israeli soldiers and seriously wounded a reservist.
According to Palestinian health officials Gaza City and the southern city of Khan Younis were targeted.
A Gazan health official told Reuters that Israel also stopped patient evacuations from the Strip through Rafah to Egypt, two days after the crossing briefly reopened, allowing a limited number of Palestinians to leave for the first time in months.
A spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent said patients had arrived at a hospital in Khan Younis in preparation for transfer, but were later told that their departures had been postponed.
“They called the patients and said today there is no travel at all, the crossing is closed,” Raja’a Abu Teir, a Palestinian patient who was scheduled to leave, told Reuters, speaking from the hospital where several patients were waiting in ambulances.
Israel’s military liaison agency to the Palestinians, COGAT, said Rafah remained open but that it had not received the necessary coordination details from the World Health Organization (WHO) to facilitate the crossings.
The WHO did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Reopening Rafah is part of the October ceasefire agreement, which outlines the first phase of U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to halt fighting between Israel and Hamas.
Sixteen patients from Gaza and 40 of their escorts crossed into Egypt on Tuesday (3 January), according to Gazan medics.
Meanwhile, a Hamas police source said at least 40 people crossed from Egypt into the Strip later the same day.
In January, Trump announced the start of a second phase of the ceasefire, focused on negotiations over Gaza’s future governance and reconstruction.
Key issues remain unresolved, including the withdrawal of Israeli forces from more than 50% of Gaza they currently occupy and the disarmament of Hamas.
Since the ceasefire began, Israeli fire has killed at least 530 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to Gaza health officials. Palestinian militants have killed four Israeli soldiers in the same period, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel’s two-year offensive on Gaza has killed more than 71,000 Palestinians, displaced most of the population and left much of the Strip in ruins, according to Gazan health authorities.
The 7 October 2023 Hamas attack that triggered the war killed about 1,200 people in Israel, according to Israeli figures.
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