Israeli strike kills 10 in Gaza, including a 10-year-old, officials say

CAIRO: An Israeli strike and gunfire killed at least 10 Palestinians, including a 10-year-old boy and allegedly a senior Hamas police officer, in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, Gazan health and police officials said.

The deaths bring the Palestinian toll from Israeli attacks to more than 1,100 since an October 2025 ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect, according to health officials in the enclave. Four Israeli soldiers have been killed by militants in Gaza over the same period.

Child shot in Rafah

Medics said Muataz Abu Shaar, 10, was shot by Israeli gunfire in Rafah, southern Gaza.

In Jabalia in the north, an Israeli airstrike on a post of the Hamas-led police force killed at least seven people, including a woman, and wounded several others, medics and police officials said. The Hamas-led interior ministry said the dead included the head of the Jabalia police force, Colonel Mohammad Marwan Salem, along with other officers.

The Israeli military said it killed Salem, whom it described as the head of Hamas’ central Jabalia battalion, along with three other militants. Those killed had in recent months gathered to plan and carry out attacks, it added. “They were eliminated in order to remove the threat.”

Ceasefire falters

The latest violence comes as Hamas leaders wrapped up another round of truce talks in Cairo on Tuesday. The discussions, mediated by Egypt, Turkey and Qatar, were aimed at implementing the second phase of U.S. President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan.

The talks included the disarmament of Hamas and the Israeli military’s withdrawal from the strip, according to sources close to the talks, who said there had been little progress amid deep distrust between the two sides.

The second phase also includes allowing a U.S.-backed Palestinian technocratic committee to assume power from Hamas, the deployment of an international security force, and the start of the reconstruction of Gaza, which has been devastated by the war.

Five countries, Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Albania, have committed to providing troops to the U.S.-backed International Stabilization Force. However, none have yet been deployed as negotiations between Trump’s Board of Peace and Hamas have stalled for months.

Speaking at an aid donor meeting in Brussels on Monday, Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace envoy for Gaza, said he would be visiting Morocco on Tuesday to “sign Morocco’s contribution to the International Stabilization Force, and soon we hope to see them on the ground undertaking their tasks.”

Mladenov said the October ceasefire was holding but “imperfectly” with violations continuing, adding that Hamas has yet to agree to what he called a “roadmap” for negotiations.

Hamas official Basem Naim accused Mladenov of supporting Israel’s position in negotiations, and failing to hold the country accountable for violating the ceasefire and not upholding the terms of the first phase of the Trump plan.

The plan called for Israel to withdraw its troops to a demarcated “yellow” line, but Israel has been slowly moving its troops forward and now effectively occupies more than 60% of the strip.

Hamas has repeatedly said that it cannot advance to the second phase of the peace plan until the terms of the first phase are fulfilled.

Nearly all of Gaza’s 2 million people, most of whom have been displaced several times, now live on a tiny strip of land along the coast, mainly in makeshift tents or damaged buildings, under Hamas control.

Hamas-led fighters killed 1,200 people during their cross-border attack into Israel on October 7, 2023, according to Israeli tallies. The Gazan health ministry said Israel’s subsequent offensive on the strip killed more than 73,000 Palestinians.