ISRAELI strikes across the southern Gaza Strip killed at least 26 Palestinians overnight into Sunday, including a Hamas political leader and several women and children. Residents said tanks had advanced into an area of the southern city of Rafah as the military ordered it evacuated. Gaza’s Health Ministry said the total number of Palestinians killed in Gaza since the start of the Israel-Hamas war has now passed 50,000 after Israel ended the ceasefire last week with a wave of strikes that killed hundreds.

 

At least 2 families among those killed in Israeli strikes Hamas said that Salah Bardawil, a member of its political bureau and the Palestinian parliament, was killed in a strike in Muwasi that also killed his wife. Bardawil was a well-known member of the group’s political wing who gave media interviews over the years. Israel has continued striking what it says are militant targets and has launched ground incursions in northern Gaza. Late Saturday, Israel’s Cabinet approved a proposal to set up a new directorate tasked with advancing the “voluntary departure” of Palestinians in line with US President Donald Trump’s proposal to depopulate Gaza and rebuild it for others.

 

Palestinians say they do not want to leave their homeland, and rights groups have said the plan could amount to expulsion in violation of international law. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said the new body would be “subject to Israeli and international law” and coordinate “passage by land, sea and air to the destination countries”. The military ordered people to leave Rafah’s already heavily destroyed Tel al-Sultan neighbourhood on foot along a single route to Muwasi, a sprawling area of squalid tent camps.