Israeli strike, settlers kill 5 Palestinians

GAZA CITY, Apr 21 (AFP): Gaza's civil defence agency said Tuesday that an Israeli strike killed three people in the Palestinian territory overnight, with Israeli warplanes seen soaring over the region after the assault, according to AFP journalists.
Despite an October 10 ceasefire, Gaza remains gripped by daily violence as both the Israeli military and Hamas accuse one another of breaching the truce.
"Three people were killed as a result of an Israeli strike at midnight in the vicinity of the Al-Zaqzouq junction in Al-Amal neighborhood, northwest of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip," spokesman for Gaza's civil defence agency Mahmoud Bassal told AFP.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said Israeli settler gunfire killed two people, including a 13-year-old child, in an attack on Tuesday in a village in the central occupied West Bank.
"Two people were killed-one aged 13 and the other 32 -- and four others were injured by live gunfire during a settler attack on the village of Al-Mughayyir near Ramallah," the Red Crescent said in a statement, adding the wounded had been taken to hospital.
As springtime temperatures rise in Gaza, a surge in rats, fleas and other pests has compounded the misery of hundreds of thousands of displaced people still living in tents after more than two years of war.
With meagre shelter and almost no sanitation, Palestinians told AFP the vermin are invading their makeshift homes, biting children and contaminating food, in what aid agencies warned was a growing public health threat.
"My children have been bitten. One of my sons was even bitten on the nose," said Muhammad al-Raqab, a displaced Palestinian man living in a tent near the southern city of Khan Yunis.
"I am unable to sleep through the night because I must constantly watch over the children," the 32-year-old construction worker, originally from Bani Shueila, told AFP.
With shelters erected directly on soft sand by the Mediterranean Sea, rodents can easily burrow under tent walls and wreck havoc inside, where people have established makeshift pantries and kitchens.
"The rodents have eaten through my tent," Raqab said.
Nearly all of Gaza's population was displaced by Israeli evacuation orders and airstrikes during the war with Hamas that began after the Islamist group's attack on Israel in October 2023.
According to the UN, 1.7 million of Gaza's 2.2 million inhabitants still live in displacement camps, unable to return home or to areas that remain under Israeli military control despite a ceasefire that began in October 2025.
In these camps, "living conditions are characterised by vermin and parasite infestations", the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Action (OCHA) said after field visits in March.
Hani al-Flait, head of pediatrics at Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza, told AFP his team encounters skin infections such as scabies daily.
"The severity of these skin infections has been exacerbated by the fact that these children and their families are living in harsh conditions that lack basic public sanitation, as well as a complete absence of safe water," he told AFP.
Sabreen Abu Taybeh, whose son has been suffering from a rash, blamed the conditions in the camp.