Gaza medics count five dead, four of them women, after a strike the army ties to al-Amoudi

Health officials, civil defence and a local church in Gaza said an Israeli airstrike on an apartment early on Saturday killed at least five people, four of them women. The Israeli military said the strike targeted Ali al-Amoudi, whom Hamas sources described as the head of the Hamas political office in Gaza.

The toll comes from the local health authority and from civil defence, and the church is the third source on the same count. Four of the five dead were women. The fifth was not described in the first accounts. The military's account names a target and does not, in the report carried by Reuters, give its own casualty figure or say whether al-Amoudi was killed.

An apartment strike with a named political target is the pattern of this war's later months. The army publishes the name. The health ministry publishes the dead in the building. The two lists rarely match in public on the same day. Saturday's gap is the same gap: a name on one side, five bodies on the other, four of them women, and no public confirmation that the named man was among them.

The church's presence in the sourcing matters because it is not the health ministry. A parish count of the same dead is harder to fold into the argument that a single authority invented the toll. It does not identify the dead by name in the wire account. It fixes the number and the place.

Gaza has been under a ceasefire framework since last October. Strikes have continued inside it. A Saturday strike on an apartment, acknowledged by the military as a targeted operation, is a strike under that framework, not a return to the full invasion. The legal argument on each side is familiar. Israel will say a political-office head is a lawful target. Gaza officials will say the dead are civilians in their home. The public record on Saturday holds both claims and does not decide them.

Al-Amoudi's role, as Hamas sources described it, is political rather than a brigade command. Targeting the head of a political office is a different claim from targeting a rocket unit. It says the office itself is in the target set. If that reading is what the military intends, Saturday is a statement about who remains on the list after a year of the ceasefire framework.

The women's share of the toll is the detail that will travel. Four women in a count of five is not a footnote. It is the fact a reader can check against any later name list. Until the names are published, the number and the sex of the dead are the check.

What the day does not settle is whether al-Amoudi is dead, wounded, or absent. The military said it targeted him. Hamas sources described his job. Neither side, in the accounts available on Monday, closed the question. The apartment and the five dead are the part of the record that does not depend on that answer.