6 killed overnight in an apparent Israeli airstrike on a home in southern Gaza

Officials at the local morgue say the strike occurred late Thursday, just before midnight.

At least six people were killed in an apparent Israeli airstrike on a home in the southern Gaza city of Rafah overnight. Officials at the local morgue say the strike occurred late Thursday, just before midnight.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have crammed into Rafah, one of the areas where Israel has told people to seek refuge. But Israeli forces continue to strike all parts of the besieged territory.

Sohad al-Derbashi, whose sister was killed in the strike, said, “They were innocent civilians who had nothing to do with what is going on.” She says the man who was the apparent target of the strike was a civil servant in the Hamas-run government and not a fighter.

Over 20,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, which does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths. Some 1.9 million people, about 85% of Gaza’s population, have fled their homes, and U.N. officials say one in four Palestinians in Gaza are experiencing famine-like starvation.

The war was ignited by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed, mostly civilians, and around 250 were taken hostage.