• UN experts decry ‘medicide’ following attacks on healthcare workers
• One-year-old child tortured with cigarettes to force father’s ‘confession’
• Investigators decide not to question officers who killed West Bank family

AS global attention shifts toward the US-Israel war with Iran, concerning media reports have emerged from Gaza and the occupied West Bank, indicating that Israeli forces continue to carry out deadly operations in the territories, with Palestinian casualties mounting despite a ceasefire being in place.

Gaza’s health ministry said that since the truce on Oct 10, Israeli actions had killed 677 and injured a further 1,800 Palestinians.

The ministry reported that Israeli strikes have averaged about 10 a day across Gaza over the past five months, a reality that has led many on the ground to dismiss the truce as meaningless.

‘No ceasefire’

“There’s no ceasefire,” said Hosny Hamdouna, whose son, a volunteer paramedic, was recently killed. “It’s all talk, for the media. In reality, there’s no ceasefire.”

His son, Abed Elrahman Hamdouna, a 31-year-old father of two, was killed in a reported drone strike west of Gaza City two weeks ago, The Guardian reported.

A volunteer ambulance driver, he was on his way to a Ramazan iftar meal with his brothers when he was struck, joining the long list of civilians killed by Israeli forces.

His death brought shock and grief to a family that had been cautiously relieved by the ceasefire announcement, knowing the immense risks he took.

“He was risking his life to help people who were injured,” his father said.

Hamdouna is one of more than 1,500 healthcare workers killed in the war, with 10 slain during the ceasefire period alone. This sustained targeting has led UN experts to claim that the “targeted destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system” by Israel’s military “amounts to ‘medicide’.”

Hamza Nabhan, a fourth-year medical student who often accompanied Hamdouna on emergency runs, called him a hero. “I said it and I will continue to say it: the paramedics, the firefighters and the civil defence workers are the real heroes of this war,” Nabhan said.

‘Killer’ officers won’t be questioned

The violence extends beyond Gaza, with a recent incident in the West Bank drawing internal criticism, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

A week after undercover Israeli Border Police shot dead four members of the Bani Odeh family, the officers involved have yet to be questioned by the Justice Ministry unit that probes police misconduct.

Sources familiar with the investigation told Haaretz the evidence collected supports the officers’ claim that they believed a car-ramming attack was imminent and fired out of fear for their lives. Consequently, the unit has temporarily decided not to call in the officers involved in the killing for questioning.

However, senior figures in Israel’s law enforcement system criticised the decision not to interrogate the officers. “This is a case where those involved must be questioned as quickly as possible, to lock in their version and prevent any obstruction of the investigation,” one senior official said.

Killed in the village of Tammun were Ali Khaled Sa’il Bani Odeh, 37; his wife, Waad Othman Akel Bani Odeh, 35; and their two sons, Othman, 7, and Mohammed, 5. Their eldest surviving son, Khaled, 11, said that after the shooting, a soldier pulled him from the vehicle and beat him, stating, “We killed dogs”.

A relative, Magdi Bani Odeh, called the official account “entirely unfounded” and described the event as “cold-blooded killing”, noting the family was returning from shopping for Eidul Fitr.

Child tortured

In a separate report from central Gaza, TRT World cited Palestinian journalist Osama Al-Kahlout, who said Israeli soldiers subjected a one-year-old child to torture to pressure his father into confessing during an interrogation.

The journalist, reporting for Palestine TV, aired footage of injuries to the child, Karim. A medical report cited in the story confirmed the child suffered cigarette burns and puncture wounds in his leg from a nail.

According to witnesses, the child’s father was detained at a military checkpoint and interrogated while soldiers allegedly tortured the boy in front of him. The child was released about 10 hours later, but his father remains in Israeli detention.

Amnesty International stated Israel is still committing acts consistent with genocide even after the ceasefire “by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction”.

Published in Dawn, March 24th, 2026