CAIRO: In a serious violation of the US-sponsored ceasefire in Gaza on Wednesday, Israeli troops killed 11 Palestinians, three of them journalists, including a freelancer who regularly contributed for AFP, local medics said.

In a statement, the civil defence said the bodies of the three journalists killed in the Israeli air strike in the Al-Zahra area, southwest of Gaza City, were transported to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

It named the dead as Mohammed Salah Qashta, Abdul Raouf Shaat and Anas Ghneim.

Shaat regularly contributed to the AFP as a photo and video journalist, but at the time of the Israeli air strike he was not on assignment for the agency.

Reporters Without Borders says Israeli troops killed as many as 29 Palestinian journalists in past 12 months

Palestinian health officials said the three Palestinian journalists were travelling in a car when Israel carried out the air strike.

The three journalists were on an assignment sponsored by the Egyptian Committee, which supervises Egypt’s relief work in Gaza, to film tent encampments built by Egypt for displaced Palestinians, other local journalists said.

An Egyptian security source confirmed the vehicle belonged to the committee but gave no further details. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said that Israeli forces killed at least 29 Palestinian journalists in Gaza between December 2024 and December 2025.

The deadliest single attack was a so-called “double-tap” strike on a hospital in south Gaza on August 25, which killed five journalists, including two contributors to international news agencies Reuters and the Associated Press.

Israel and Hamas have traded blame for multiple breaches of the October truce after two years of war that devastated Gaza and caused a humanitarian disaster, and remain at odds over the next steps in US President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan.

Earlier on Wednesday, Palestinian medics said three people, including a 10-year-old boy, were killed as a result of Israeli tank shelling east of Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza. Two others, a boy of 13 and a woman, were killed in two Israeli shooting incidents in Khan Younis in Gaza’s south, they said.

Three other Palestinians were killed in other Israeli shootings across the coastal enclave, taking Wednesday’s death toll to at least 11, the health ministry of Gaza said.

Residents said the two incidents occurred in Palestinian-controlled areas. The ceasefire brought about a partial Israeli military withdrawal, leaving Israeli forces holding about 53 per cent of the enclave, but they have been gradually expanding their presence in recent weeks, leading to further displacement of Palestinian families, residents said.

There was also no immediate Israeli military comment on the two incidents.

Earlier on Wednesday, it claimed in a statement that Israeli forces had killed a “terrorist” who entered an area under their control, posing an imminent threat to soldiers operating there.

Trump plan not progressing

The US-brokered October deal has not progressed beyond the first-phase ceasefire, under which major fighting stopped, some Israeli forces pulled back, and Hamas freed Israeli prisoners in return for Palestinian prisoners.

Under future phases whose details have yet to be hammered out, Hamas is supposed to disarm, Israeli forces withdraw further and an internationally bac­ked administration installed to rebuild the ruined, densely-populated territory.

But no timetable has been set to implement the plan.

Trump was due on Thursday to preside over a ceremony celebrating the Board of Peace, a group he formed with the stated goal of redeveloping the coastal enclave.

Israel says it can only move into the second phase after Hamas hands over the remains of the last Israeli prisoner.

On Wednesday, Hamas Gaza spokesperson Hazem Qassem said the Palestinian group had shared all information it had on the body of the last Israeli prisoner and searched for it but in vain, blaming Israeli military obstruction.

Israeli forces have killed at least 466 Palestinians in Gaza since the ceasefire took effect, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Published in Dawn, January 22nd, 2026