18 killed in Israeli air strike on Gaza mosque

Eighteen people have been killed and more than dozens of others wounded in an Israeli air strike on a Gaza mosque early.

Near the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip the strike on the mosque on Sunday (October 6) came as the war between Israel and Hamas in the Palestinian enclave approaches its first anniversary.

The number of casualties could rise as the mosque was being used to house displaced people, reports Reuters.

According to the Israeli military, it conducted a precise strike on Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command and control centre embedded in a structure that previously served as the 'Shuhada al-Aqsa' Mosque in the area of Deir al Balah.

The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's subsequent military assault on Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's health ministry. It has also displaced nearly all of the enclave's 2.3 million people, caused a hunger crisis and led to genocide allegations at the World Court that Israel denies.