The Israeli occupation army escalated its aggression against the Gaza Strip on Friday night, launching a wave of land, sea, and air bombardments targeting various areas it continues to occupy.

The intensified attacks focused on the eastern areas of Gaza City and the town of Beit Lahia, as well as the eastern sectors of the Bureij camp. Airstrikes also hit the city of Rafah and the towns of al-Qarara and Bani Suheila, located east of Khan Yunis.

Warplanes carried out multiple air raids on the Shuja'iyya and al-Tuffah neighborhoods east of Gaza City. Meanwhile, Israeli occupation vehicles opened fire and launched shells at the eastern areas of the Zeitoun neighborhood, southeast of the city. Simultaneously, occupation warships unleashed heavy machine gun fire and artillery shelling towards the sea off the coast of Gaza City, according to Al Mayadeen's correspondent.

These escalations come in direct violation of the ceasefire agreement announced on October 9, 2025. Despite the declared truce, the Israeli occupation continues its raids and bombardments across the Gaza Strip. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, more than 350 people have been martyred as a result of the ongoing violations.

Gaza life expectancy cut nearly in half

On another note, a new demographic analysis reveals that the war on Gaza has caused an unprecedented collapse in population survival rates, with researchers estimating that more than 78,000 Palestinians were killed between October 7, 2023, and December 31, 2024, and that the current death toll has likely already surpassed 100,000.

The findings come from a study conducted by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) and the Centre for Demographic Studies (CED), which examined the wide-ranging effects of the Israeli occupation’s assault on mortality in the Gaza Strip. The study warns that life expectancy in 2024 fell to nearly half of what it would have been without the war, marking one of the sharpest recorded demographic shocks in decades.

Researchers relied on public datasets from multiple humanitarian organizations and institutions, including the Gaza Ministry of Health, B’Tselem, OCHA, UN-IGME, and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Due to the chaos of conflict and communication disruptions, casualty documentation remains fragmented and incomplete, a challenge the study sought to directly address.