Israel strikes Gaza on October 7 anniversary, five dead, say officials

Israel carried out new strikes in Gaza on Wednesday as it marked the third anniversary of the Oct.7 attacks by Hamas, with Palestinian officials reporting five people killed.

In Gaza City, Al Shifa hospital reported two people killed in an Israeli strike overnight.

Gaza's civil defence identified one of the dead as Mohamed Tamous and said he was a volunteer for the agency, which serves as an emergency rescue service under Hamas.

In the southern city of Khan Yunis, Nasser Hospital said that a 60-year-old man, Hisham Ibrahim Abu Mustafa, was killed in an Israeli strike and that others were injured.

The hospital also reported receiving the body of Ziad Zaarab, who it said was killed in an Israeli airstrike south of Khan Yunis that left several injured.

A strike on a tent in the Al Buraq camp in the afternoon killed another person, the hospital said.

On the third anniversary of the first day of the war in Gaza, living conditions remain dire in the coastal Palestinian territory, despite a US-brokered ceasefire that came into effect in October 2025.

"After three years of siege, killing and destruction, Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into an uninhabitable place," said Gaza City resident Mahmoud Abu Hasira.

'Beneath the rubble'

Hundreds of thousands of displaced people still live in tent cities and makeshift shelters that sprawl on beaches or next to piles of rubble from bombed-out residential buildings.

"We once had homes, but now we have lost our loved ones, whose bodies still lie beneath the rubble," said Bassam Nasser, a resident of Beit Hanoun, a now largely destroyed city in Gaza's north, who was displaced in the early days of the war.

Israel says it controls about 60 per cent of Gaza, on the territory's outer perimeter including Beit Hanoun, while most of the Palestinian population lives in the remaining Hamas-controlled areas.

Though Israel eased its restrictions on aid trucks entering Gaza after the ceasefire, Ahmed Nasser, another resident of Gaza City, told reporters that life remained desperately hard.

"The war and the famine have left us hungry, fearful and displaced, living in tents and struggling with soaring prices," he said.

Israel's military offensive has displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza and killed more than 74,200 people, according to Gaza's health ministry, which is under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.

Since the ceasefire was declared last October, Israeli forces have killed more than 1,460 people in Gaza, according to the ministry.
Agence France-Presse