Gaza health ministry says 9 killed in Israel strike

The Gaza health ministry said an air strike killed nine people in the north of the Hamas-run territory on Wednesday as Israel kept up its bombardment on the day a ceasefire took hold in Lebanon.

The ministry said the strike hit a shelter for displaced people in Al-Tabi'een School in Gaza City's Daraj district.

The Israeli army said it had "eliminated" in Gaza City a suspect in a May 2002 bombing which wounded 10 civilians in the Israeli city of Beersheba.

The military said it had also struck dozens of Hamas targets in the "combat zone" in the northern towns of Jabalia and Beit Lahia.

It said "troops operated to eliminate terrorists in aerial strikes and close-quarters encounters" at the former Al-Harthani School in Beit Lahia.

"During the operation, Hamas terrorists fired anti-tank missiles from the Indonesian Hospital at the troops," the army claimed.

Militant group Hamas condemned the "criminal military operation in northern Gaza".

Earlier on Wednesday, a senior Hamas official hailed the truce in Lebanon, adding that the group was ready to reach a ceasefire in Gaza.

A ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect before dawn, ending more than a year of hostilities and two months of full-scale war.

Gaza's civil defence agency said it had only one working rescue vehicle in the whole of the territory due to fuel shortages.

The Gaza war began with Hamas's unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 last year, which resulted in the deaths of 1,207 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed 44,282 people in Gaza, according to figures from the health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.