Gaza health officials say Israeli strike kills 5

Gaza's civil defence agency and a hospital said on Saturday that an overnight Israeli airstrike on an apartment in Gaza City killed five Palestinians, including four women.

Israeli media reported that the military was targeting Ali al-Amoudi, a senior Hamas official. The army has yet to comment on the incident.

Gaza City's Al-Shifa hospital told AFP it had "received at dawn five martyrs and a number of injured... following the Israeli airstrike on an apartment" in the Rimal neighbourhood.

It said the dead were two women and their daughters, as well as a young man.

Mahmoud Bassal, the spokesperson for the civil defence which operates as a rescue force under Hamas authority, told AFP that his team took "five bodies and several wounded" to the hospital after the strike.

He said two missiles directly hit the apartment, causing a fire and damaging the building.

The director of Al-Shifa later said that two of the five victims were Christians and that their funerals were held in the small Greek Orthodox church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City.

Around 1,000 Christians live in the Palestinian territory, most of whom are Orthodox.

The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas's unprecedented 2023 attack against Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

The massive Israeli offensive in response has left most of Gaza in ruins 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.

Israeli forces have killed more than 1,440 people since a ceasefire was announced last October, according to Gaza's health ministry.

The Israeli military has identified five deaths in its ranks over the same period, as well as the death of one civilian contractor.