Two killed near Al-Shifa as Guterres asks for a permanent Gaza ceasefire

Israeli strikes killed at least two Palestinians in Gaza on Tuesday, health officials told Reuters. One died near Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. The other died in a separate strike nearby. The Israeli military said both strikes targeted militants. The date is the eve of the third anniversary of the Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023, which killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 hostages into Gaza.

Palestinian authorities put the dead from Israel's campaign since that day at more than 74,000. A narrower count, also from Gaza health officials, says at least 1,400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the US-brokered ceasefire of last October. Israel says four of its soldiers have been killed by militants in Gaza over the same stretch. Those two post-ceasefire figures are the measure of a truce that neither side describes as holding.

What each side says the truce requires

Israel says Hamas has been rearming and launching attacks in breach of the ceasefire, and has increased strikes in recent weeks. Hamas denies that it is trying to attack or rebuild an arsenal, and accuses Israel of undermining the deal. The written terms, as Reuters summarised them, include Hamas disarming and Israel withdrawing troops, then reconstruction. Little of that sequence has been carried out. A strike near Al-Shifa on the eve of the anniversary is what the gap looks like on a single morning.

UN secretary-general António Guterres, in a message on Tuesday, called for a permanent ceasefire and for aid at scale. He said last year's ceasefire had brought some relief and had not yet produced adequate security, assistance, or a credible path to recovery. He asked the parties to carry out their commitments and move to the next phase of the plan. He also repeated the formula of Israelis and Palestinians living side by side with rights protected. The message does not name Tuesday's two dead. It describes the political file those deaths sit inside.

Al-Shifa as a location, not a symbol

Al-Shifa is Gaza City's main hospital. A death near it is a specific place, not a general claim about the strip. Health officials located one of the two killings there and the second nearby. The military's answer was that the targets were militants. Neither account, in the Reuters report, named the dead. A ceasefire that still produces unnamed dead beside a hospital is failing at the point where medical staff and fighters are hardest to separate in a public statement.

The 1,400 and the four are the numbers that keep the day from being read as an isolated strike. Fourteen hundred Palestinian deaths since the ceasefire is a rate, not a single raid. Four Israeli soldiers in the same period is the figure Israel uses to argue the other side has not stopped. Both can be true as counts and still leave the disarmament and withdrawal clauses undone. Guterres's "next phase" is those clauses. Katz's order, issued on Monday, to pursue about 2,000 people he says are still alive from the original attack, points the other way. Tuesday's strikes are compatible with the second instruction and in tension with the first.

The anniversary clock

Wednesday is the date itself. Memorials in Israel have already been held, including Netanyahu's remarks at Mount Herzl. Gaza's health ministry will add Tuesday's two to a total that already sits above 74,000. The ceasefire text still calls for reconstruction that has barely started. The concrete items on the table tonight are a hospital gate, two dead, a secretary-general's appeal, and a post-truce toll of 1,400 and four. None of those is a next phase. They are the record of the phase that has not ended.