The IDF continued its constant violations of the US-backed Gaza ceasefire on Monday by launching attacks across the Strip as an Israeli-backed militia also clashed with Hamas-aligned fighters on the ground.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said in its daily update on Monday that Israeli attacks killed at least two Palestinians and injured 22 over the previous 24-hour period, bringing the total number of Palestinians killed since the so-called ceasefire deal was signed in early October to 777 and the number of wounded to 2,193.
Among the Palestinians killed in Gaza on Monday was Rasha Abu Jazar, a 40-year-old woman who was seven months pregnant. According to the Quds News Network, she was killed by Israeli gunfire in the al-Mawasi tent camp near Rafah, southern Gaza.
Israeli attacks also hit northern Gaza on Monday, where the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that several people were injured by Israeli gunfire in Jabalia, including one Palestinian who was in critical condition.
The Quds News Network also reported on the ground clashes between Hamas and Israeli-backed fighters, which occurred in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. The QNN report said that resistance fighters ambushed members of an Israeli-backed militia and killed several of its members before Israeli intervened with a drone attack, which allowed the militia members to retreat.
Israel has armed and supported several militias and gangs that are based on the Israeli-occupied side of the yellow line. The largest group, known as the “Popular Forces,” started as an aid-looting gang led by Yasser Abu Shabab, a known smuggler who was killed late last year.
Abu Shabab was replaced by Ghassan al-Duhaini, who was previously 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.
