Night in Gaza carries sound differently. The air holds it close—distant engines, a door closing, a voice drifting across rooftops—until the darkness settles and the city waits for morning. In those hours before dawn, time feels elastic, stretched between what has already happened and what might arrive next.
Health officials in the Gaza Strip said at least 12 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes, among them a senior commander from Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The strikes, carried out by the Israel Defense Forces, were described as part of ongoing military operations aimed at armed groups operating in the enclave.
The deaths were reported after a series of overnight attacks that struck multiple locations, including residential areas. In Gaza’s dense urban fabric, where homes, shops, and alleyways lean closely together, the distinction between military target and civilian surroundings is often measured in meters. Ambulances moved through narrow streets as daylight returned, their routes familiar yet newly burdened.
Israeli officials said the operation targeted militant leadership, framing the strike as a precise action within a broader campaign. Palestinian officials, meanwhile, emphasized the civilian toll, noting that families were among those killed and wounded. As with so many recent days, competing narratives moved alongside one another, each shaped by loss and urgency, each incomplete without the other.
Islamic Jihad, a smaller but influential armed group in Gaza, has played a recurrent role in cycles of escalation, sometimes acting independently of Hamas. Analysts say the killing of a senior commander may alter short-term dynamics, though experience suggests such moments rarely settle the larger conflict. Instead, they often redraw its contours, briefly, before tension resumes its familiar shape.
For residents, the impact is immediate and personal. Windows shattered overnight are boarded by afternoon. Children return to school with stories they half-finished telling themselves. Electricity flickers, then steadies. Life resumes not because the danger has passed, but because it must.
As officials confirm names and numbers, the facts remain stark: 12 dead, strikes carried out, a senior militant figure among them. The consequences, however, move more slowly. They unfold in conversations held softly indoors, in streets swept clean again, and in the long memory of a place where nightfall has learned to carry news before the sun can reveal it.
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Sources (names only) Gaza Health Ministry Israel Defense Forces Reuters Associated Press United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs