172 Palestinians killed by Israel since ceasefire took effect, health ministry official says

Israeli forces have killed at least 172 people in the Gaza Strip and injured 1,189 others since the ceasefire took effect, Zaher al-Wahidi, head of the Health Information Unit at Gaza’s Health Ministry told Mada Masr on Monday. 

The Israeli military still has troops and vehicles stationed in buffer zones along Gaza’s borders and has launched artillery and drone fire at nearby residents of the strip in near-daily violations of the ceasefire agreement that came into effect on January 19.

In a Monday breach of the agreement between Hamas and Israel to halt hostilities, a missile launched from an Israeli drone killed three people when it struck a group of civilians gathering firewood in Wadi Gaza, in the central governorate of the Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Press Agency, Safa.

A similar strike took place on Monday in the Jeneina neighborhood of eastern Rafah, wounding three others, according to the agency.

Following the attack in Wadi Gaza, the Israeli military issued a statement justifying the strike, claiming the victims were attempting to plant explosives near Israeli troops in central Gaza. The same accusation was made against the three wounded in Rafah.

With Israel enforcing a total blockade on the strip since March 2 and limiting access to fuel and electricity, tens of thousands of families in Gaza have once again resorted to building household fires to meet their daily needs with available materials such as wood or paper, or “forced fuel,” as the Palestinian outlet Al-Ayyam recently described it.

Israeli officials have said the blockade is intended to pressure Hamas into agreeing to release all the remaining Israeli and American nationals it holds in an extension to the first phase of the ceasefire, which came to an end earlier in March. The proposal to extend phase one has received backing from the United States.

Hamas, meanwhile, has refused the extension without progress in negotiations toward implementing the second phase of the agreement, which was meant to establish terms for the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from the strip.

As Palestinians in Gaza grapple to keep going amid the blockade, civilians and civil defense agencies continue to clear areas that were destroyed in the 17 months of Israeli bombing that began in October 2023.

Wahidi told Mada Masr that 990 bodies — around 220 of them unidentified — have so far been retrieved from the rubble of destroyed buildings and previously inaccessible areas since the ceasefire came into effect.

Not including the attacks on Monday, Gaza’s hospitals received nine injured people over the past 24 hours, along with the bodies of five others, according to a Monday statement from Gaza’s Health Ministry.

The latest figures bring the total death toll since the start of the war to 48,577, with 112,041 wounded, the ministry said.