Gaza rescuers say five dead in Israel strike

Gaza's civil defence agency said Saturday that five people were killed in an Israeli strike on a tent in Gaza City, all members of single family according to relatives. "Three children, their mother and her husband were sleeping inside a tent and were bombed by an (Israeli) occupation aircraft," family member Omar Abu al-Kass told AFP.The strikes came "without warning and without having done anything wrong," added Abu al-Kass, who said he was the children's maternal grandfather.AFP images from the scene showed mourners, some of them weeping, gathering alongside five white shrouds of different sizes."Five martyrs and wounded in an (Israeli) occupation air strike on a tent in the Sabra neighbourhood" of Gaza City, civil defence spokesman Mahmoud Bassal told AFP.

The Israeli army, which resumed its offensive in Gaza on March 18 ending a two-month truce, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the strike. The war in Gaza was triggered by Hamas's October 2023 attack, which killed 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Israeli retaliation has killed at least 52,787 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry, which the United Nations considers reliable.