Five people were killed in Israeli strikes throughout Gaza on Thursday, with a senior Israeli officer confirming that the Israel Defense Forces have taken over 60 percent of the Strip’s territory, in what further demonstrated the porous nature of the ceasefire with Hamas.

Medics said an Israeli airstrike killed two people near the Tuffah neighborhood in the north of the enclave, while a third person was killed in Israeli tank shelling in the Zeitoun suburb in eastern Gaza City.

Another airstrike at a tent encampment for displaced people in western Gaza City killed one person and wounded several, while an attack on a vehicle in Khan Younis, in the south, killed another, medics said.

Witnesses also reported that an airstrike hit a residential building in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, causing damage to several homes nearby.

The deaths add to a toll of more than 1,100 Palestinians killed by Israeli strikes since an October ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect, according to Gazan health officials. The figure doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants, but the IDF has found the Hamas health ministry figures to be generally reliable.

The army only commented on one of the Thursday killings, confirming that it carried out an airstrike in northern Gaza that killed an individual who it said was a Hamas commander who invaded Israel during the October 7, 2023, onslaught.

Nihad Riyad Abd al-Rahim Arouq was a platoon commander in Hamas’s Shati Battalion and recently worked to train additional terrorists and advance attacks on troops, the military claimed.

“The terrorist posed a threat to our forces operating in the Gaza Strip and was eliminated in a precise aerial strike,” the IDF said.

The IDF in recent months has........

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