An Israeli drone attack in southern Gaza on Monday killed three Palestinians, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported on Monday, as the IDF continues to violate the US-backed ceasefire deal.
The WAFA report said that a group of Palestinian civilians was targeted in the city of Khan Younis, and the dead were identified as Wissam Abdullah Salem al-Amour, Mahmoud Subhi Breika, and Atef Samir al-Bayouk. A woman was also injured by Israeli gunfire south of Khan Younis.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said Monday that since the ceasefire deal was supposed to go into effect in early October, Israeli forces have killed at least 442 Palestinians, a total that accounts for bodies brought to hospitals and morgues. “A number of victims remain trapped under the rubble and in the streets, as rescue and civil defense teams have been unable to reach them so far,” the ministry said.
Also on Monday, a senior member of the Hamas-led police force was killed in an attack claimed by one of the Israeli-backed militias operating in Gaza. According to Al Jazeera, Gaza’s Interior Ministry said that Lt. Col. Mahmoud Al-Astal, the chief of police in Khan Younis, was killed by gunfire from a car that fled the scene in al-Mawasi, the tent camp in southern Gaza.
Housam al-Astal, the leader of an Israeli-backed group that calls itself the “Counterterrorism Force,” said his militia was responsible. “Those who work with Hamas, your destiny is to be killed. Death is coming to you,” he said in a video released on the attack.
Israel has been arming anti-Hamas militias and gangs, which control some territory in the Israeli-occupied side of Gaza. The main group, known as the Popular Forces, started as a gang led by Yasser Abu Shabab, who was known for looting aid trucks.
Abu Shabab was killed in December and replaced by Ghassan al-Duhaini, who was once a member of the Army of Islam, or Jaysh al-Islam (not to be confused with a Syrian group with the same name), a Gaza-based Salafi jihadist group with a similar ideology to al-Qaeda that declared its allegiance to ISIS in 2015.
