Israeli airstrikes killed at least 43 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Thursday, including 11 people in the sprawling al-Mawasi tent encampment designated as a humanitarian safe zone for civilians.
Among those killed in the al-Mawasi strike was the director general of Gaza’s police department, Mahmoud Salah, and his deputy, Hussam Shahwan, according to the Hamas-run Gaza interior ministry.
“By committing the crime of assassinating the director general of police in the Gaza Strip, the occupation is insisting on spreading chaos … and deepening the human suffering of citizens,” Hamas added in a statement.
The Israeli military said it had conducted the strike on the al-Mawasi encampment, just west of the city of Khan Younis, and eliminated Shahwan, calling him the head of Hamas security forces in southern Gaza, but made no mention of Salah’s death.
Medics said the 11 people killed included women and children.
The latest strikes in Israel’s 15-month war in Gaza, which has led to more than 45,500 Palestinian deaths, came as negotiations for a ceasefire-for-hostages deal appeared to have stalled again, despite pressure to conclude an agreement before Donald Trump is sworn in as US president on 20 January. The war was triggered by Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and another 251 taken hostage.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad said in a video message on Thursday that an Israeli hostage had tried to take his own life, without giving further details on the hostage’s identity or current condition. In a statement by the group on the Telegram messaging service, a spokesperson for al-Quds Brigades, the group’s armed wing, said one of the group’s medical teams had intervened and prevented him from dying.
Other Israeli airstrikes killed at least 26 Palestinians, including six in the interior ministry headquarters in Khan Younis and others in north Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp, the al-Shati beach camp and central Gaza’s Maghazi camp.
“As the year begins, we got reports of yet another attack on Al-Mawasi with dozens of people killed, another reminder that there is no humanitarian zone let alone a safe zone,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, said in a post on X. “Every day without a ceasefire will bring more tragedy.”
Later on Thursday, separate Israeli airstrikes killed at least four people in central Gaza City and two in its Zeitoun district, medics said.
The latest deaths in Gaza came as the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the occupied West Bank ordered the suspension of broadcasts by the Qatar-based Al Jazeera across the Palestinian territories, accusing the network of incitement, official media reported.
Al Jazeera is already banned from broadcasting from Israel amid a long-running feud with the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
In September, armed and masked Israeli forces raided the Al Jazeera office in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, saying it was “used to incite terror”.
The military issued an initial 45-day closure order, prompting the Palestinian foreign ministry to condemn “a flagrant violation” of press freedom.
On Wednesday, however, the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, said Al Jazeera’s “insistence on broadcasting inciting content and reports characterised by misinformation, incitement, sedition and interference in Palestinian internal affairs” had led to its suspension.
An Al Jazeera employee contacted by Agence France-Presse confirmed the network’s office in Ramallah had received a suspension order on Wednesday.
Wafa said: “The specialised ministerial committee, comprising the ministries of culture, interior and communications, has decided to suspend broadcasts and freeze all activities of Al Jazeera satellite channel and its office in Palestine.
“The decision also includes temporarily freezing the work of all journalists, employees, crews and affiliated channels until their legal status is rectified due to Al Jazeera’s violations of the laws and regulations in force in Palestine.”
Al Jazeera condemned the decision in a statement, saying it “aligns with Israeli occupation practices targeting its media teams”.
It accused the PA, which has partial administrative control in the West Bank, of “attempting to deter Al Jazeera from covering escalating events in the occupied Palestinian territories” including in Jenin and its refugee camp.
The PA’s security forces have been engaged in weeks of deadly clashes with armed militants in Jenin, in the northern West Bank.
Analysts have suggested the PA’s security clampdown in Jenin is being driven by a desire to reassert its frayed authority on the West Bank and also to send a signal to western countries, not least the incoming Trump administration.
Agencies contributed to this article