Gaza airstrikes ceasefire violations continued Sunday when two separate Israeli strikes killed at least two people, including a four-year-old boy, and wounded seven others, according to Palestinian health officials.

The strikes came as Israel warned it would escalate operations in Gaza in response to balloons, drones and kites launched from the territory toward Israeli communities.

What Happened in Zawayda

One strike hit a building in the central Gaza town of Zawayda, following what residents described as an Israeli army warning for the property’s occupants to evacuate before the attack occurred.

Medics said the blast sent debris and shrapnel across dozens of meters, wounding at least six people. Among them was four-year-old Mohammad Abdel-Salam Taha, who was later pronounced dead at the hospital.

A displaced Palestinian sheltering nearby, identified as Abu Ahmed, described the scene bluntly, stating that there is no functioning ceasefire and nothing resembling peace. He expressed a simple wish for solutions and a chance to live without violence, standing near what had become a pile of mangled steel and concrete where the building once stood.

A second strike hit the nearby Nuseirat refugee camp, according to health officials. Israel’s military said it was reviewing both incidents.

Strikes Continue Despite Ceasefire

An October 2025 ceasefire, brokered with U.S. backing, halted large-scale fighting across Gaza, but it has not stopped Israeli military strikes, which the military says are necessary to disrupt attacks being planned by Hamas and other militant groups operating in the territory.

In a separate operation, the Israeli military said late Saturday that it had killed Sharif Al-Hasnat, a senior Hamas militant, in the city of Deir Al-Balah. According to the military, Al-Hasnat had been leading efforts to rebuild Hamas’s underground infrastructure network.

Hamas has accused Israel of violating the ceasefire terms and undermining a broader plan championed by President Trump aimed at ending the conflict altogether. That plan reportedly includes provisions for Israeli troop withdrawals and the disarmament of Hamas.

The Human Toll Since the Ceasefire

According to Gazan health officials, more than 1,280 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the ceasefire technically took effect last October. The Israeli military reports that four Israeli soldiers have been killed during the same period.

That disparity in casualty figures reflects the asymmetric nature of continued hostilities even under a nominal ceasefire framework, with Israeli strikes accounting for the overwhelming majority of deaths recorded since the agreement was reached.

Israel Threatens Further Escalation

Israel has reported a pattern of drones, balloons and kites launched from Gaza toward Israeli territory. Following a security assessment conducted Sunday, the government warned Hamas that strikes would intensify and that civilian evacuation orders could follow if the launches did not stop immediately, according to a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.

Senior Hamas official Basem Naim dismissed the warning in a social media post, framing the kite launches as something children do in search of ordinary childhood experiences amid the destruction surrounding them, rather than as a coordinated military provocation.

Violence Escalates in the West Bank

Separately, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, an Israeli man was stabbed and wounded by a suspect believed to be Palestinian, according to police and the Israeli military.

Security camera footage released by the military showed a man waiting near a vehicle along a main highway close to Jericho before attacking the Israeli man as he approached his parked car. The suspect fled on foot, and Israeli forces launched a search to locate him.

In a separate incident elsewhere in the West Bank, health officials reported that Israeli forces shot and killed a 14-year-old boy, Islam Ajjouri, during a raid into the Askar refugee camp near Nablus. The Israeli military said it was investigating the circumstances of that incident.

A Region Under Sustained Pressure

The West Bank, home to roughly 3 million Palestinians alongside approximately 500,000 Israeli settlers, has experienced a marked increase in settler violence along with land and resource seizures in recent months.

International bodies, including the United Nations, along with the majority of countries worldwide, consider Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law governing military occupations. Israel disputes that characterization, pointing instead to historical and biblical claims to the territory as justification for continued settlement activity.

A Fragile and Contested Ceasefire

Taken together, Sunday’s events illustrate how tenuous the current ceasefire arrangement remains. While large-scale combat operations have technically stopped, both Gaza and the West Bank continue experiencing regular violence, airstrikes, shootings, stabbings and military raids, that has claimed civilian lives on both sides.

With Hamas and Israel still deadlocked over the terms needed to formalize a broader end to the conflict, and with each side accusing the other of undermining the fragile truce, the prospects for a durable resolution remain uncertain even as the human cost continues accumulating on both sides of the divide.