CAIRO, Jan 31 (Reuters/AFP): Israel carried out its heaviest airstrikes in Gaza in weeks on Saturday, killing 26 people according to local health authorities, in attacks on a Hamas-run police station and on apartments and tents in an area sheltering displaced Palestinians.
Despite the tenuous ceasefire agreed between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas, Israeli warplanes targeted the Sheikh Radwan police station west of Gaza City, killing 10 officers and detainees, medics and police said.
Rescue teams were searching for more casualties at the site, said the police, who are run by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Another airstrike hit an apartment in Gaza City killing three children and two women, according to officials at Shifa hospital in the city. Seven more were killed in a strike at a tent encampment in Khan Younis further south.
An Israeli military source said the strikes were carried out in response to an incident on Friday in which troops identified eight gunmen emerging from a tunnel in Rafah, an area in southern Gaza where Israeli forces are presently deployed under the October ceasefire agreement.
Three of the gunmen were killed by the forces and a fourth, whom the Israeli military described as a key Hamas commander in the area, was arrested.
Hamas did not comment on the incident, which the military source said constituted a violation of the ceasefire, and it blamed Israel for breaching the truce.
Video footage from Gaza City showed charred, blackened and destroyed walls at an apartment in a multi-storey building, and debris scattered inside it and outside on the street.
"We found my three little nieces in the street. They say 'ceasefire' and all. What did those children do? What did we do?" said Samer al-Atbash, an uncle of the three dead children.
Israeli fire has killed more than 500 people, most of them civilians according to Gaza health officials, since the U.S.-brokered truce between Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel took effect in October after two years of war.
The United States said Friday it had approved a $3.8 billion sale to Israel of 30 Apache attack helicopters and related equipment, as a fragile ceasefire is in place in Gaza.
The sale was within a new package of nearly $6.7 billion in weapons to Israel, for which President Donald Trump has vowed strong support.
"The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability," the State Department said in a statement.
"This proposed sale is consistent with those objectives," it said. Also in the package was a $1.8 billion sale of joint light tactical vehicles.
The United States sends billions of dollars worth of military supplies per year to Israel, largely in aid rather than sales. Israel and Hamas reached a US-backed ceasefire in October that largely paused two years of war.
The Trump administration has said that the ceasefire is now in its second phase, with a focus on disarming Hamas.
Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, resulting in the deaths of 1,221 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally that includes hostages who died or were killed during their captivity in the Gaza Strip.
