Israel kills a number of Palestinians in its raids on Gaza

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Israeli soldiers killed a number of Palestinians in northern Gaza on Tuesday, a day after US President Donald Trump announced the end of the two-year-old war in the coastal enclave during a stalled visit to the Middle East.

The Palestinian Wafa News Agency reported that six people were martyred when Israeli drones bombed citizens who were inspecting their homes in the Shujaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza City.

The Israeli army said that its forces opened fire after “several” Palestinians approached the so-called Yellow Line, to which the Israeli army withdrew as part of the multi-stage peace agreement proposed by Trump.

It denied reports that Palestinians attempted to infiltrate an Israeli military site.

The killings came four days after a fragile ceasefire took effect in Gaza, paving the way for Monday’s hostage and prisoner exchange that formed the first part of Trump’s plan to end what has become the bloodiest war in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The fighting led to the deaths of nearly 68,000 Palestinians and about 2,000 Israelis, as well as turning a large part of Gaza into rubble and causing a humanitarian catastrophe in the Palestinian Strip.

In a speech to the Israeli parliament and at a subsequent summit in Egypt, Trump praised what he described as “The historical dawn of a new Middle EastHe predicted “the beginning of great reconciliation and lasting harmony” between Israel and its neighbors.

The exchange began smoothly, with Hamas releasing the remaining 20 hostages it had held in Gaza, and Israel releasing nearly 2,000 Palestinians, including 250 prisoners serving life sentences and more than 1,700 Gazans it had kidnapped and held without charge since the beginning of the operation. war.

But later on Monday, the group representing the families of Israeli hostages accused Hamas of violating the terms of the deal, after the militant group said it would initially hand over only four bodies of the 28 hostages who died on or after the October 7, 2023, attack that sparked the war.

The Israeli army said on Tuesday that it had identified the four bodies. It stated that two of them were the Israeli hostage Jay Illouz and the Nepalese hostage Bipin Joshi, and said that it did not publish the names of the other two hostages because their families had not yet given their consent.

She said Illuz died from wounds he sustained on October 7 while in detention without proper medical treatment, while Joshi — a student who came to Israel to study agriculture — was likely killed in captivity in the early stages of the war.

The army added that Hamas “is required to fulfill its part of the agreement and make the necessary efforts to return all hostages to their families and bury them properly.”

However, Israeli officials have privately acknowledged that it may take some time to locate all the bodies, some of which may be under rubble or in areas no longer under the militant group’s control. An international task force is scheduled to help find the remaining bodies.