Israeli airstrike kills 10 people, half of them children, as mediators try to restart a ceasefire
Palestinians mourn over the bodies of their relatives who were killed in an Israeli airstrike, as they brought to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, on Saturday, April 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
By WAFAA SHURAFA and SAMY MAGDY
An Israeli airstrike flattened a three-story home in Gaza City on Saturday, killing 10 people — half of them children — as Arab mediators scrambled to restart a ceasefire.
Israeli strikes killed at least 49 people in the past 24 hours, according to health officials.
The dead in the early morning airstrike in a neighborhood in western Gaza City included three women and five children, according to Shifa Hospital, which received the bodies.
Israel's military said that it had struck a Hamas militant and the structure where he operated collapsed, adding that the collapse was under review.
'There is no one from the resistance among them,' said Saed Al-Khour, who lost his family in the strike. 'Since 1 o'clock until now we have been pulling out the remains of children, women and elderly people.' He stood amid the rubble, under a tilted ceiling.
Three other people were killed in the Shati refugee camp along Gaza City's shoreline.
Hamas said Saturday that it had sent a high-level delegation to Cairo to try and get the ceasefire, shattered last month by Israeli bombardment, back on track.
Israel has vowed to continue the war until all hostages are returned and Hamas is destroyed or disarmed and sent into exile. It says it will hold parts of Gaza indefinitely and implement U.S. President Donald Trump's proposal for the resettlement of the population in other countries, which has been widely rejected internationally.
Hamas has said that it will only release the dozens of hostages it holds in return for Palestinian prisoners, a complete Israeli withdrawal and a lasting ceasefire, as called for in the now-defunct agreement reached in January.
Hamas said that its delegation will discuss with Egyptian officials the group's vision to end the war, which also includes reconstruction.
Earlier this week, other Hamas officials arrived in Cairo to discuss a proposal that would include a five-to-seven year truce and the release of all remaining hostages, officials said.
Egypt and Qatar are developing the proposal, which would include the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the release of Palestinian prisoners, according to an Egyptian official and a Hamas official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to brief media.
Israel has continued its nearly two-month blockade of Gaza, even as aid groups warn that supplies are dwindling.
On Friday, the World Food Program said that its food stocks in Gaza had run out, ending a main source of sustenance for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. It said the dozens of charity kitchens it supports are expected to run out of food in the coming days.
About 80% of Gaza's population of more than 2 million relies primarily on charity kitchens for food because other sources have shut down under Israel's blockade, according to the U.N.
'Meanwhile, nearly 3,000 UNRWA trucks of lifesaving aid are ready to enter Gaza,' the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees said on social media. 'The siege must stop.'
Hamas on Saturday called on the Trump administration to immediately reverse its decision that the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees isn't immune from being sued, calling it a dangerous step by Israel's close ally.
Israel's offensive has killed more than 51,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which doesn't say how many of the dead were fighters or civilians. Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251. The militants still have 59 hostages, 24 believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
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How quickly nuclear work could resume will in part depend on whether Israeli and U.S. strikes destroyed Iran's stock of enriched uranium and equipment needed to make it sufficiently potent for possible weapons use. 'The key element is the material. So once you have the material, then the rest is reasonably well-known,' said Pavel Podvig, a Geneva-based analyst who specializes in Russia's nuclear arsenal. He said killing scientists may have been intended 'to scare people so they don't go work on these programs.' 'Then the questions are, 'Where do you stop?' I mean you start killing, like, students who study physics?' he asked. 'This is a very slippery slope.' The Israeli ambassador said: 'I do think that people that will be asked to be part of a future nuclear weapon program in Iran will think twice about it.' Israel is widely believed to be the only Middle Eastern country with nuclear weapons, which it has never acknowledged. Previous attacks on scientists Israel has long been suspected of killing Iranian nuclear scientists but previously didn't claim responsibility as it did this time. In 2020, Iran blamed Israel for killing its top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, with a remote-controlled machine gun. 'It delayed the program but they still have a program. So it doesn't work,' said Paris-based analyst Lova Rinel, with the Foundation for Strategic Research think tank. 'It's more symbolic than strategic.' Without saying that Israel killed Fakhrizadeh, the Israeli ambassador said 'Iran would have had a bomb a long time ago' were it not for repeated setbacks to its nuclear program — some of which Iran attributed to Israeli sabotage. 'They have not reached the bomb yet,' Zarka said. 'Every one of these accidents has postponed a little bit the program.' A legally grey area International humanitarian law bans the intentional killing of civilians and non-combatants. But legal scholars say those restrictions might not apply to nuclear scientists if they were part of the Iranian armed forces or directly participating in hostilities. 'My own take: These scientists were working for a rogue regime that has consistently called for the elimination of Israel, helping it to develop weapons that will allow that threat to take place. As such, they are legitimate targets,' said Steven R. David, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. He said Nazi German and Japanese leaders who fought Allied nations during World War II 'would not have hesitated to kill the scientists working on the Manhattan Project' that fathered the world's first atomic weapons. Laurie Blank, a specialist in humanitarian law at Emory Law School, said it's too early to say whether Israel's decapitation campaign was legal. 'As external observers, we don't have all the relevant facts about the nature of the scientists' role and activities or the intelligence that Israel has,' she said by email to AP. 'As a result, it is not possible to make any definitive conclusions.' Zarka, the ambassador, distinguished between civilian nuclear research and the scientists targeted by Israel. 'It's one thing to learn physics and to know exactly how a nucleus of an atom works and what is uranium,' he said. But turning uranium into warheads that fit onto missiles is 'not that simple,' he said. 'These people had the know-how of doing it, and were developing the know-how of doing it further. And this is why they were eliminated.'
