Israeli police said a Canadian citizen was killed after threatening Israeli security forces with a knife near the Gaza border.
The Israeli military said the man drove to the entrance of an Israeli town close to the Gaza border, left his vehicle and began threatening security forces with a knife. The forces opened fire and killed the man.
There were no other injuries.
The attack took place at the entrance of the Israeli town of Netiv HaAsara, which is just 300 metres north of the Gaza border. Israel has experienced a wave of stabbing attacks across the country during the nine-month war in Gaza.
Dozens killed in Khan Younis
The Israeli military on Monday ordered the evacuation of part of an area in the Gaza Strip it has designated a humanitarian zone. The military said it is planning to begin an operation against Hamas militants who have embedded themselves in the area and used it to launch rockets toward Israel.
The evacuation area includes the eastern part of the Muwasi humanitarian zone, which is located in the southern Gaza Strip.
Thousands of Palestinians, many carrying backpacks and accompanied by children, walked down dusty roads under the scorching sun, navigating dilapidated cars with belongings tied on top. Many Palestinians have been uprooted multiple times in search of safety during Israeli’s air and ground campaign.
“We do not know where we are walking,” said Kholoud Al Dadas, as she clutched her children. “This is our seventh or eighth time we have been displaced. While we were sleeping in our homes, they started shooting at us, bombing from everywhere.”
The Israeli military said it was continuing to operate in central and southern Gaza. At least 38 people were killed in the southern city of Khan Younis, according to hospital officials and a count of the bodies by an Associated Press journalist. One person was killed and three injured in a strike outside Al-Aqsa Hospital in the central town of Deir-Al-Balah, where many people have sheltered outside the facility.
Precarious humanitarian conditions inside besieged Gaza have worsened with the discovery of the polio virus as water and sanitation services have deteriorated for the territory’s 2.3 million people, most of them displaced. Traces of the virus were found in sewage samples in Gaza.
2 more hostages believed dead
The war in Gaza has killed more than 38,900 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The war began with an assault led by Hamas militants on southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, including several Canadian citizens.
More than 100 hostages taken on Oct. 7 were freed in a pause in fighting late last year, while several others were rescued in Israeli military operations.
It is believed by the Israeli government that about 116 hostages have yet to be repatriated, though about one-third have so far been pronounced dead in absentia.
The Israeli military announced the deaths on Monday of two additional Israeli hostages, saying they believe Yagev Buchshtab, 35, and Alex Dancyg, 76, who were kidnapped from homes in kibbutzim on Oct. 7, were no longer alive, based on intelligence.
