Israel blasts Gaza targets as Hamas’ response to truce plan hangs

PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES (AFP) — Israeli strikes hammered a Gaza refugee camp on Friday as the Palestinian territory’s Hamas rulers have yet to respond to a ceasefire proposal by Israel.

The Nuseirat refugee camp faced renewed Israeli artillery shelling and airstrikes, eyewitnesses said.

Witnesses also confirmed Israeli strikes in the east of Deir al-Balah, as well as intensive fire from Israeli army vehicles east of the Bureij camp, where a blaze raged at a roundabout.

In Gaza City, casualties were reported from an Israeli missile strike on the Ashram family home near Al-Salam mosque, according to a medical source at Baptist Hospital.

Six people were killed and several wounded in an Israeli strike on the Wafati home in Maghazi camp, said a medical source at Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital.

Air force jets also targeted the Al-Sultan neighborhood of Rafah, sources in the city on the southern border with Egypt said.

Gaza also came under fire from the sea, with Israeli warships bombarding homes in the fishermen’s port area, among others, west of Gaza City, an Agence France-Presse correspondent said.

Meanwhile, “mediators have not yet received a response from the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) regarding the latest (Israeli ceasefire) proposal,” Majed al-Ansari told Qatar’s state news agency.