Israeli forces have killed another Palestinian in Gaza despite a United States-brokered ceasefire, bringing the toll since the truce to 236, as Hamas handed over the remains of three more captives.
Medics said on Sunday that the Palestinian man was killed in an Israeli drone attack on the Shujayea neighbourhood of Gaza City, where Israeli forces have been carrying out building demolitions since the morning.
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The Israeli military said the man had crossed the “yellow line” marking the ceasefire boundary and approached its troops, without offering evidence.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, Israeli forces have killed at least 236 Palestinians and wounded 600 others since the ceasefire took effect last month.
It said the bodies of 502 Palestinians have also been retrieved from under the rubble of destroyed homes and buildings since the truce, taking the overall death toll from Israel’s war to 68,856 people.
Hamas, meanwhile, announced handing over the remains of three captives to Israel via the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office confirmed receiving the bodies.
The Times of Israel said the remains will be examined at the Abu Kabir forensic institute in Tel Aviv and that the identification process could take up to two days.
Israel must now return the bodies of 45 dead Palestinian prisoners, 15 for each Israeli captive returned.
Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman in neighbouring Jordan, said the recovery of the bodies followed a “complex search operation”.
The search is currently happening beyond the “Yellow Line”, with Hamas fighters entering with ICRC staff, aided by “outside heavy machinery as these bodies lie under the rubble”, Odeh said.
“Now, the Israeli destruction of homes continues in those areas, whether its in Bani Suheila, where the bodies of the three captives were found this Sunday, or in the Shujayea neighbourhood, east of Gaza City, where the search continues for more bodies of Israeli captives,” she said.
Experts and US officials expect the search for the remaining eight to be even more complicated.
“There are hundreds of tonnes of rubble in Gaza, and it is not going to be sure whether Hamas will be able to locate all of those bodies,” Odeh said. “It will be up to the [US President Donald] Trump administration to steer the ceasefire forward, because Israel conditions moving to phase 2 [of the ceasefire] on the return of all the bodies of Israeli captives.”
Accusations of US disinformation
The developments came as tensions heightened in Gaza after the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) accused Hamas of looting an aid truck in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, without providing evidence. The claim followed the release of drone footage allegedly showing “suspected Hamas elements” commandeering humanitarian supplies.
Gaza’s Government Media Office dismissed the allegations, accusing Washington of spreading disinformation to smear Palestinian authorities.
“This accusation is completely false and fabricated from its very foundation, and comes within the framework of a systematic media disinformation campaign aimed at distorting the image of the Palestinian police forces,” the media office said.
It added that Gaza’s police “are carrying out their national and humanitarian duty in securing aid and protecting relief convoys”, despite Israel’s continued interference.
“The police system is making every effort to control matters despite continued Israeli meddling in the internal arena, with several objectives, including engineering starvation by obstructing the delivery of aid,” the statement added.
Health crisis worsens
Hospitals in Gaza, already crippled by months of war and blockade, remain overwhelmed. More than 16,500 patients in need of specialised treatment remain trapped inside the besieged enclave, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
A recent United Nations update showed that by September, Egypt had taken in the largest number of Palestinian evacuees for medical care – nearly 4,000 people. The United Arab Emirates received 1,450 patients, Qatar received 970, and Turkiye took in 437.
In Europe, Italy treated 201 Palestinian patients – the highest among European states – but thousands more, including 3,800 children, are still waiting for urgent medical evacuation abroad.
A study published in The Lancet medical journal this week underscored the human toll of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The report found that Gaza has lost more than a staggering three million years of human life since the start of the conflict in October 2023.
Researchers Sammy Zahran of Colorado State University and Ghassan Abu Sittah of the American University of Beirut analysed data from 60,199 recorded deaths between October 2023 and July 2025. Each death, they calculated, represented an average of 51 years of life lost – the majority being civilians.
More than one million of those life-years were lost among children under the age of 15. The authors noted that their estimates were conservative and excluded deaths caused by starvation, lack of medicine, and the collapse of infrastructure under Israel’s siege.
Race against winter
With winter approaching, Gaza’s displaced families are scrambling to rebuild any form of shelter amid Israel’s restrictions on building materials, Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim Al Khalili reported from Gaza City.
In Gaza’s largest urban centre, the focus of Israeli carpeting bombing from August to October this year, 42-year-old Khalid al-Dahdouh, a father of five, has turned to traditional methods to erect a small mud shelter for his family, using bricks salvaged from the rubble.
“We tried to rebuild because winter is coming,” al-Dahdouh told Al Jazeera. “We managed to lay just a few rows of bricks – we don’t have tents or anything else. So, we built a primitive structure out of mud since there’s no cement. As you can see, it protects us from the cold, insects, and rain – unlike the tents.”
“We’re just trying to survive the cold and the hunger. Ceasefire or not, Gaza is still under attack,” al-Dahdouh said.
Inspired by him, his relative, Saif al-Bayek, attempted a similar effort but ran out of usable materials before finishing.
“The whole neighbourhood is in ruins,” al-Bayek said. “We made the shelter out of mud using traditional methods, using whatever stones we could salvage, since there weren’t enough to build a full room. Because of this, the structure is uneven, and the roof is full of gaps – if it rains heavily, water will come through.”
“There are severe challenges to reconstruction efforts. Many families are forced to rely on primitive building methods because they have no other choice,” Alessandro Mrakic, the UN Development Programme’s representative in Gaza, told Al Jazeera.
With hundreds of thousands of people still displaced, aid agencies warn that the situation could deteriorate further as temperatures drop.
While the ceasefire has halted large-scale bombardments, Palestinians in Gaza say their suffering continues – through hunger, homelessness, and the constant fear that Israel’s war could reignite at any moment.
