GAZA/ WASHINGTON: Overnight Zionist entity strikes killed at least 19 people across Gaza, the Palestinian territory’s civil defense agency said on Tuesday. Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that “19 civilians including several children were martyred” and dozens more wounded in the latest Zionist entity attack. Gaza’s health ministry said Tuesday that 58 people had been killed in the previous 24 hours.

Five children and four adults were killed in a strike that hit a home in the central city of Deir Al-Balah, while two separate pre-dawn attacks on Gaza City and Beit Lahia in the north left a total of 10 people dead, Bassal said. Separately, a media outlet affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement, a Hamas ally, announced the death on Monday of an employee named Ahmed Mansur in a Zionist entity strike on a tent used by journalists in the Khan Yunis area.

Gaza’s government media office had on Monday reported the death of journalist Hilmi Al-Faqaawi, who worked for a local news agency, in the same strike, which also wounded another nine. The Zionist entity’s military meanwhile said the strike had targeted Hassan Abdel Fattah Mohammed Aslih, claiming, without evidence, that he was a Hamas member operating “under the guise of a journalist.”

Men pray by the bagged-bodies of victims killed by Zionist entity air strikes on the Sabah family building in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, at the Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in on April 8, 2025.

The Zionist entity resumed intense strikes on the Gaza Strip on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire. Efforts to restore the truce have so far failed. According to Gaza’s health ministry, at least 1,391 Palestinians have been killed in the renewed Zionist assault, taking the overall death toll since the start of the war to 50,752.

US President Donald Trump said on Monday he would like the war in Gaza to stop and thinks that will happen relatively soon, as he hosted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. Asked if he would deliver on his election campaign promise to end the war in Gaza, Trump said: “I’d like to see the war stop, and I think the war will stop at some point, that won’t be in the too-distant future.” Trump said work was ongoing to free captives held by Hamas, but said securing the release of all the hostages was “a long process.” Trump and Netanyahu spoke to reporters in the Oval Office after their meeting.

Following the January ceasefire that saw some captives released, Netanyahu said, the Zionist entity was working on another deal, without providing details. Trump said having “a peace force like the United States there controlling and owning the Gaza Strip would be a good thing” and once again suggested that Palestinians from Gaza could be moved to different countries. Netanyahu said he discussed with Trump the US president’s “bold vision” for the future of Gaza. Trump’s plan has been globally condemned as a proposal for ethnic cleansing. — Agencies