In Hamas-run Gaza, civil defense rescuers said an Israeli air strike in the early hours of Saturday killed 15 people from a Palestinian family, including nine children.

The strike hit the home of a family in Al-Zawaida neighborhood of central Gaza, civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told the news agency AFP.

“The toll from the Israeli strike on the Ajlah family home and their warehouse in Al-Zawaida is 15 dead,” Bassal said, adding nine of those killed were children.

The Israel-Hamas war started when Hamas-led militants stormed across the heavily guarded frontier from Gaza into Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians. 

They also took about 250 hostages, more than 100 of whom were released during a weeklong cease-fire in November. About 110 are thought to still be inside Gaza, but Israeli authorities believe around a third of them are dead.

More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel’s devastating retaliatory offensive, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which is run by Hamas.

The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but the UN and multiple humanitarian organizations consider the casualty numbers to be broadly reliable.

Hamas is a Palestinian Islamist group that has been designated as a terrorist outfit by the EU, the US, Germany and several other countries.