Israeli strike on Gaza funeral kills 7, wounds 22, hospital says

A strike on a funeral in the central Gaza Strip killed seven people and wounded 22 others, Awda Hospital said, turning a mourning gathering in Nuseirat into another scene of death. The dead and wounded were taken to the hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp on Friday, July 17, 2026.

The Israeli military said it targeted a “terrorist cell” belonging to Palestinian Islamic Jihad and said it was aware civilians may have been harmed in the strike. The attack hit Palestinians attending the funeral of a person killed earlier in the day, adding a second layer of loss to a gathering that should have been protected by custom and humanitarian norms.

Images from the scene placed the strike in Nuseirat, in central Gaza, where mourners and rescuers were left to pick through debris after the blast. Other attacks in Gaza killed five more people that day, extending the toll beyond the funeral site and underscoring how quickly civilian spaces can be overtaken by violence.

The strike fits a wider pattern of mass-casualty incidents in central Gaza. On July 3, 2024, another attack in the area killed at least seven people, including two women, and bodies were taken to Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah. On Oct. 4, 2025, funerals were held for seven people killed in an overnight Israeli strike in central Gaza, a reminder that mourning in the enclave has repeatedly taken place under threat of fresh fire.

Nuseirat and the surrounding central Gaza corridor have become places where homes, shelters, roads and public gatherings have all been exposed to attack. The funeral strike added to that record, leaving a burial ceremony to stand as yet another casualty scene in a war that has steadily narrowed the space civilians can treat as safe.