The Khan Younis strike, according to a medical source at Nasser Hospital who spoke to Anadolu Agency, killed five Palestinians in al-Mawasi, an area west of Khan Younis that has become a crowded zone of displacement tents and makeshift shelters. Gaza’s Interior Ministry identified the five as police officers and said they were on duty at the time of the strike. The ministry named them as Lieutenant Colonel Muhammad Zakaria Al-Jamal, 44; Major Bassam Naamat Miqdad, 53; First Sergeant Muhammad Amin Al-Nams, 37; Police Assistant Shaher Muhammad Zaarab, 28; and Police Assistant Muhammad Ali Abu Shaar, 23. It said the ministry had now recorded at least 75 police officers and personnel killed since the ceasefire took effect. Local residents said the attack landed near schools for children, causing widespread panic among students and faculty members, a detail that, if confirmed, would add to concerns about the proximity of strikes to civilian infrastructure even in areas designated as safer for displaced families. The Israeli military, in comments to Agence France-Presse, said it had struck several Hamas members in Khan Younis, without providing further details. It did not say whether the people it described as Hamas members were the same people the Interior Ministry identified as police officers, a distinction that matters because Gaza’s police forces, which are administered by the Hamas-run government, perform civilian policing functions in addition to any role in the broader conflict, and because international humanitarian law draws distinctions between combatants, members of organized armed groups, and civilians performing law-enforcement functions.
In Gaza City, a separate strike on al-Thawra Street killed three Palestinians, including a child, and wounded six others, according to a medical source at al-Shifa Hospital. Reports identified the child as a four-year-old boy killed alongside his father, although details of the identities of all three victims in Gaza City were less fully reported than those in Khan Younis. Gaza’s civil defence service confirmed the death tolls in both locations. The Israeli military acknowledged strikes in northern Gaza as well as southern Gaza on Sunday, saying it was examining the results, but it did not immediately comment specifically on the Gaza City strike. The pattern of the day, two strikes, in two different parts of the territory, with civilian casualties reported in both, was consistent with a pattern that Gaza health authorities and humanitarian organizations have described throughout the ceasefire period: a truce that has reduced the scale of violence compared with the full-scale war that preceded it, but has not ended deadly strikes, and has left civilians in Gaza living with the daily risk that a strike could hit their street, their shelter, or their family.
Gaza ceasefire violations and the toll since October 10
The ceasefire that took effect on October 10, 2025, was brokered by the United States and was intended to halt the war that began after Hamas-led fighters killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and took hostages, and after Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza killed, according to Palestinian authorities, more than 74,000 people. The ceasefire agreement called for a phased process, including the release of hostages and prisoners, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from parts of Gaza, the entry of humanitarian aid, and eventual reconstruction of the territory. In practice, the ceasefire has held in the sense that large-scale ground operations and sustained bombardment have not resumed at the scale seen before October 2025, but it has not held in the sense of ending all deadly violence. Gaza’s Health Ministry said that, as of the weekend, 1,580 Palestinians had been killed, and 5,711 wounded in Israeli attacks since the ceasefire took effect. Israel, for its part, said four soldiers had been killed in the same period, and it has accused Hamas of rearming, rebuilding its military capabilities, and launching attacks in violation of the agreement. Hamas has denied trying to carry out attacks or rebuild its arsenal, and has accused Israel of repeatedly violating the ceasefire and undermining the prospects for a lasting settlement.
Those competing claims cannot both be fully true in every detail, and readers should treat them as claims by parties to a conflict, not as neutral findings. What is not in dispute is that deadly violence has continued, that both sides have accused each other of violations, and that the institutions that would normally adjudicate such claims, an independent monitoring mechanism with access to both sides’ operational information, have not been able to provide a definitive, incident-by-incident accounting that both sides accept. In that vacuum, casualty figures come primarily from Gaza’s Health Ministry and from medical sources in Gaza’s hospitals, which have been the primary source for casualty reporting throughout the war and whose figures have generally been considered broadly reliable by the United Nations and by independent researchers, even as Israel has disputed some specific claims. Israeli statements, meanwhile, provide the military’s account of its own operations but rarely include the detailed targeting information that would allow an independent assessment of whether a specific strike complied with the laws of war. The result is a public record in which the fact of deaths is usually well documented, while the legal and military characterization of each death remains contested.
Israel’s stated rationale for its continued strikes is that Hamas has been rearming and launching attacks in breach of the ceasefire, and that it has stepped up strikes against the group in recent weeks in response. That rationale, if accepted, would frame Sunday’s strikes as enforcement actions against a party violating the agreement. Hamas’s stated position is the opposite: that it has not sought to rebuild its arsenal or carry out attacks, and that Israel’s strikes are themselves the violations, aimed at weakening the prospects for a lasting settlement and at maintaining military pressure on Gaza even under a ceasefire. Neither claim can be independently verified from the public statements alone, because neither side has published the operational evidence that would prove or disprove it. What observers can note is that the pattern of strikes, including strikes on police officers, on gatherings of civilians, and near schools, has drawn criticism from humanitarian organizations, which argue that even if some targets were legitimate military objectives, the pattern of civilian harm suggests a failure to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians, as international humanitarian law requires.
Strikes near schools and panic in Khan Younis and Gaza City
The detail that Sunday’s Khan Younis strike landed near schools deserves particular attention, because schools in Gaza have a dual role that makes them especially sensitive. During the war, many schools became shelters for displaced families, and after the ceasefire, schools that remained standing resumed educational functions while also serving communities that had nowhere else to gather. A strike near a school therefore affects not only the people directly killed and wounded but also children and teachers who witness the strike, who may be traumatized and who may be reluctant to return to school afterward. Local residents in al-Mawasi said the attack caused widespread panic among students and faculty members, a reaction that is understandable in a territory where schools have repeatedly been struck during the war and where the sound of an airstrike carries associations that go far beyond the immediate incident. Humanitarian organizations have repeatedly called for schools, hospitals, and other civilian infrastructure to be protected, and have noted that the repeated striking of areas near such facilities undermines the ability of civilians to resume normal life even during a ceasefire.
In Gaza City, the strike on al-Thawra Street similarly affected a civilian gathering, according to medical sources, who described a drone targeting a gathering of civilians. The Israeli military did not immediately provide its account of the Gaza City strike, which leaves a gap in the public record that is itself significant. When a military acknowledges a strike in a general area but does not address a specific incident with reported civilian casualties, it becomes impossible for the public to assess whether the strike was aimed at a military target, whether civilians were present, and whether precautions were taken. That gap is not unique to Sunday’s strikes; it has been a recurring feature of the ceasefire period, in which Israeli statements often confirm operations in broad terms while leaving specific casualty reports unaddressed. For families in Gaza City, the practical consequence is the same regardless of the legal characterization: a street that was considered relatively safe on Sunday morning became a place of death and injury by the afternoon, and the uncertainty about why it was struck adds to the fear that any street could be next.
Beyond the two strikes that killed eight people, Sunday also saw reports of gunfire wounding civilians across Gaza, including a two-year-old girl shot in Khan Younis and a woman critically injured in northern Gaza, according to medical sources cited in local reporting. Those reports, which are less fully documented than the two airstrikes, nevertheless fit a pattern of low-level violence, gunfire from military vehicles, artillery shelling of eastern areas of Khan Younis, and heavy fire toward displacement camps, that has continued alongside the airstrikes. Taken together, the airstrikes and the gunfire reports paint a picture of a ceasefire that is, at best, partial: a reduction in the intensity of war, but not a return to safety for civilians, who continue to be killed and wounded by multiple forms of violence on a near-daily basis.
What the ceasefire says, and what each side says the other broke
Under the ceasefire agreement, both sides committed to halting hostilities while a phased process unfolded. The initial phase included the release of hostages held in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from populated areas of Gaza to agreed lines, and a surge in humanitarian aid into the territory, where most of the population had been displaced and where infrastructure, including hospitals, water systems, and schools, had been devastated. Later phases were intended to address the longer-term questions that have defined the conflict for decades: the governance of Gaza, the reconstruction of the territory, security arrangements, and the political future of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Those later phases were always the most difficult, because they required agreement not only on the immediate cessation of violence but on the political arrangements that would follow it, and because both sides entered the ceasefire with fundamentally different understandings of what a lasting settlement would look like.
The United States played a central role in brokering the ceasefire, and the Trump administration presented it as a major diplomatic achievement, a step toward ending a war that had lasted two years and had become a defining issue in American foreign policy. The administration’s special envoys and senior officials were involved in negotiations with Israel, with Hamas through intermediaries, and with regional partners including Egypt and Qatar, which have long served as mediators in Gaza conflicts. The ceasefire’s survival therefore became a test not only for the parties themselves but for the credibility of American diplomacy in the region, and each reported violation prompted questions about whether the United States would pressure Israel, Hamas, or both to adhere to the agreement, or whether the agreement would gradually erode as both sides tested its limits.
A pattern of violations since the ceasefire began
Since October 10, the pattern has been one of repeated, smaller-scale violence rather than a single, decisive collapse. Israeli strikes have killed Palestinians on a regular basis, often described by the military as responses to ceasefire violations by Hamas or as strikes on militants preparing attacks. Palestinian sources have reported deaths from airstrikes, artillery shelling, and gunfire, often in areas near the ceasefire lines or in displacement camps. Hamas and other Palestinian groups have been accused by Israel of attacks on Israeli soldiers, including incidents that killed four soldiers, and of attempting to rebuild military infrastructure. Each incident has been followed by competing statements, with Israel framing its actions as defensive and Hamas framing Israeli actions as aggression, and with little independent verification of the specific claims in either direction. The cumulative effect has been a ceasefire that is technically in place but that has not delivered the sense of safety that civilians in Gaza, or soldiers on the Israeli side of the border, were promised.
Hamas, for its part, has accused Israel of using the ceasefire as a cover for continued military operations, arguing that strikes on police officers, on civilians, and on areas near schools and shelters demonstrate that Israel has not genuinely committed to halting hostilities. That argument resonates with many Palestinians in Gaza, who point to the death toll since October 10 as evidence that the ceasefire has not changed their daily reality in a meaningful way. Israeli officials, conversely, argue that Hamas has used the ceasefire period to regroup, to rearm, and to prepare attacks, and that Israeli strikes are necessary to prevent a return to the full-scale war that preceded the ceasefire. Both arguments are, in a sense, self-reinforcing: each side points to the other’s actions as justification for its own, and each incident becomes another entry in a ledger of grievances that makes the next incident more likely.
For families in Gaza, the legal and political arguments about who violated the ceasefire first, or most seriously, are secondary to the immediate reality of living under a truce that does not guarantee safety. A mother in Khan Younis who sends her children to school must weigh the risk that a strike could land near that school. A father in Gaza City who walks to a market on al-Thawra Street must weigh the risk that a drone could target a gathering on that street. A police officer on duty in al-Mawasi, performing the civilian function of maintaining order in a displacement zone, must weigh the risk that his uniform makes him a target. Those are not hypothetical risks; they are the risks that Sunday’s deaths demonstrate, and they are the reason that humanitarian organizations have called for a more robust ceasefire monitoring mechanism, with independent observers, clear rules of engagement, and a transparent process for investigating reported violations.
Gaza’s humanitarian situation under a partial ceasefire
For most of Gaza’s population, the ceasefire has not brought a return to normal life, even where it has reduced the intensity of bombardment. Much of Gaza’s housing stock was destroyed or damaged during the war, and hundreds of thousands of people remain displaced, living in tents, in damaged buildings, or with relatives in overcrowded conditions. Water, electricity, and sanitation systems, already strained before the war, were severely damaged, and the entry of humanitarian aid, while improved compared with the height of the war, has not been sufficient to meet the needs of a population that is almost entirely dependent on external assistance. Hospitals, many of which were damaged or destroyed, are operating with limited supplies and staff, and the medical system that reports Sunday’s deaths is itself under enormous strain, treating casualties from both the war and the ongoing violence of the ceasefire period.
Many families are living in tents that offer little protection from rain, cold, or heat, and that are vulnerable to fire, as a separate incident on Sunday demonstrated. In al-Mawasi, a fire in a displacement tent killed two infant girls, according to local reports, a tragedy that, while not attributed to a strike, illustrated the precariousness of life in tents. A tent fire can spread in seconds, and in a crowded camp with limited access to water and firefighting equipment, it can kill before help arrives. The deaths of the two infants, on the same day as the airstrikes, underscored that the dangers facing civilians in Gaza are not limited to military violence; they include the everyday hazards of displacement, of living in temporary shelters without adequate safety measures, and of a humanitarian system that is stretched to its limits.
In that context, the question of whether a particular strike violated the ceasefire, or whether a particular police officer was a legitimate target, can feel abstract to the people most affected. For a family that has lost a child to a strike, to a tent fire, or to a lack of medical care, the distinction between a ceasefire violation and a lawful military action does not change the loss. Humanitarian organizations have therefore called not only for adherence to the ceasefire but for a broader effort to protect civilians, including the provision of safe shelter, the restoration of water and electricity, the rebuilding of hospitals and schools, and the establishment of a monitoring mechanism that can investigate reported violations and hold violators accountable. Without those steps, they argue, a ceasefire that is technically in place will continue to feel, to the people living under it, like a continuation of war by other means.
What comes next for Gaza and the ceasefire
In the days ahead, the key questions will be whether Sunday’s deaths prompt a diplomatic response, whether either side changes its military posture, and whether the ceasefire’s phased process continues to move forward or stalls. If the United States and other mediators treat Sunday’s strikes as a serious violation and press for a halt to such strikes, the ceasefire could be stabilized, at least temporarily. If they treat them as routine enforcement actions, or if they remain silent, the pattern of the past three weeks, regular strikes, regular casualties, regular competing statements, is likely to continue. The stakes are not only for Gaza’s civilians, although they are the most immediate, but for the broader region, where a collapse of the ceasefire could reignite a full-scale war, and for American diplomacy, where the ceasefire is presented as evidence that a negotiated settlement is possible.
For readers following this story, the most important thing to remember is that casualty figures, while important, do not by themselves answer the question of whether a ceasefire is holding. A ceasefire can be technically in place while civilians continue to die, and it can be violated in ways that do not immediately produce a large death toll but that undermine trust and make a return to war more likely. The pattern since October 10, a reduction in large-scale violence combined with continued deadly strikes, is a pattern that has been seen in other conflicts where a ceasefire was declared but not fully implemented, and where the parties continued to use force to shape the political outcome. Whether Gaza’s ceasefire follows that pattern to collapse, or whether it can be strengthened into a lasting peace, will depend on decisions made in the coming days and weeks by Israel, by Hamas, and by the mediators who brought them to the table in the first place.
USN will update this story as new casualty figures, official statements, and diplomatic developments become available. Readers should follow the Gaza Health Ministry, the Israeli military, the United Nations, and humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza for the latest information, and should treat claims by parties to the conflict as claims, not as established facts, until they can be independently verified. The situation in Gaza remains fluid, and the information in this story reflects the best available reporting as of Sunday, November 1.
Sources
USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from TRT World, The Jerusalem Post and Al Jazeera.