IDF reportedly kills seven Palestinians in Gaza including child as IDF moves Yellow Line

Palestinian father Youssef Salman mourns as he carries the school bag of his eight-year-old son Jad, who was killed in an Israeli strike on the Jabalia refugee camp, 8 June 2026

Rawan Suleiman reports in Haaretz on 8 June 2026:

Israeli strikes killed seven people in the Gaza Strip on Monday, including an eight-year-old boy, according to Palestinian media reports.

Two Israeli drone strikes were reported in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday morning. In the first, a drone struck a vehicle, wounding four. In the second strike, an Israeli drone fired at tents housing displaced Palestinians, killing two and wounding others.  The two fatalities were identified as Iyad Nawfal and Ahmed Maarouf.

Another drone strike on a vehicle was reported on Gaza’s key Salah al-Din road near Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. Another drone fired at people gathered in Jabalia Refugee Camp in northern Gaza, killing three, including eight-year-old Jad Salman.  Seven others were wounded in the strike, the Palestinian Red Crescent said. According to local reports, the casualties were digging a well before being struck.

Later on Monday, sources in Gaza said an Israeli strike on an apartment in Gaza City wounded eight people, while one of the 43 wounded in earlier strikes succumbed to his wounds.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, Israel has killed 970 people and wounded 3,063 others since the cease-fire took effect on October 11. The ministry said 782 additional bodies have been recovered from the rubble in that period.

The official death toll in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war on October 7, 2023, stands at 72,980 killed, the ministry said, with 173,171 others being wounded.

Later on Monday, the IDF’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, also known as COGAT, announced that border crossings in Gaza would reopen on Tuesday, after they had been closed on Sunday evening after Iran fired missiles at Israel for the first time since the cease-fire. COGAT issued its statement on the reopening of crossings after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel had halted its strikes on Iran.

COGAT assured that the two-day closure “will not affect the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip,” saying that the “substantial quantities of food” that have entered Gaza during the cease-fire “exceed the nutritional needs of the population.”

Last week, Gazans began posting footage of yellow blocks – used as markings by the IDF – in Shakush, a part of Al-Muwasi on the outskirts of Rafah. Unlike other parts in Rafah, the area is outside the Yellow Line, dividing IDF-controlled territory from the rest of the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military uses such blocks to demarcate the Yellow Line and areas off-limits to Palestinians. In December, residents of the Gaza Strip told Haaretz that the yellow blocks were moving deeper into Gaza, with streets that were accessible days earlier now considered forbidden zones.

The IDF’s new markers bring Israeli forces closer to areas populated with tents and displacement centres. In Bani Suheila, a town in eastern Khan Yunis, residents said they could see the tanks from their tents.  The line, which was instituted after the October cease-fire, when Israel pulled out from some areas it controlled, has advanced deeper into Gaza’s populated areas, funneling civilians into a tightening geographic area.

Nagham Zbeedat and Reuters contributed to this report.

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