GAZA CITY: Dozens of Palestinians gathered at a Gaza City hospital on Saturday to mourn six people, including children, that the civil defence said were killed by the Israeli shelling of a shelter for displaced people.

The Israeli military said late on Friday that troops had fired at “suspicious individuals to eliminate the threat”, adding that it was reviewing the incident and “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals”.

Gaza’s civil defence agency initially said on Friday that the Israeli shelling of a school-turned-shelter killed five people in the Tuffah neighbourhood east of Gaza City.

Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal updated the toll to six, including children, on Saturday, adding that two people were unaccounted for under the rubble.

The director of Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, said that the victims were a four-month old infant, a 14-year-old girl, two men and two women.

Inside the hospital’s morgue on Saturday, relatives peered beneath blankets to get a last glimpse of their loved ones. Outside, a grief-stricken man clutched an infant’s body wrapped in a white shroud.

Five other body bags were laid out on the ground as mourners prayed over the dead. “This is not a truce, it is a bloodbath,” said Nafiz Al-Nader, who witnessed the attack.

“We want the bloodshed to stop and we don’t want to lose our loved ones every day,” he said.

Abdullah Al-Nader, who lost his relatives, said that the shelling suddenly erupted in the evening.

“It was a safe area and a safe school and suddenly… they began firing shells without warning, targeting women, children and civilians,” he said.

In a statement on Saturday, Hamas denounced “a brutal crime committed against innocent civilians and a flagrant, recurring violation of the ceasefire agreement”.

The Palestinian movement urg­ed the ceasefire mediators and US President Donald Trump’s adm­­inistration “to assume their resp­onsibilities regarding these violations and intervene immediately”.

The ceasefire remains fragile with both sides alleging violations, and mediators fearing that both Israel and Hamas are stalling.

The health ministry in Gaza said on Saturday that at least 401 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the territory since the ceasefire came into effect on October 10.

Published in Dawn, December 21st, 2025