The strike came as a Hamas delegation was due to meet with Egyptian officials in Cairo, according to a source from the Palestinian resistance movement.

Gaza's civil defence agency had also reported another four people killed in an earlier Israeli strike.

The Gaza interior ministry expressed its condemnation, saying the Israeli military committed a "heinous crime this afternoon when it targeted a police vehicle carrying several officers and personnel in the central governorate".

"The attack resulted in the killing of nine officers and personnel," it said in a statement, listing the victims, among them the police chief for the central governorate, Colonel Iyad Abu Yousef.

Earlier, the Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir el-Balah said it had received the bodies of "eight martyrs" killed in the strike on the town of Zawaida in central Gaza.

Hamas condemned the incident, saying: "This treacherous crime reflects the true face of the occupation and its exposed policy aimed at continuing the war of genocide and deepening the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip."

Ceasefire violations
 

Israeli attacks against Palestinians have persisted in the Gaza Strip despite a ceasefire that came into effect on 10 October, which was meant to bring an end to Israel’s two-year war on Gaza that saw daily massacres of Palestinians in the strip.

Earlier on Sunday, Gaza's civil defence agency said an Israeli strike killed four people in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the centre of the territory.

In a statement, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem condemned the bombing as "a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement".

The latest deaths came as a Hamas source told AFP that a delegation in Cairo had met with Bulgarian politician Nickolay Mladenov, named high representative for Gaza under US President Donald Trump's Board of Peace.

The board was established after the Trump administration, with longtime mediators Qatar and Egypt, negotiated a ceasefire to halt two years of Israel's carpet bombing in Gaza.

The Cairo delegation, headed by Hamas official Nizar Rayyan, "demanded an immediate halt to all violations and called on Israel to implement the second phase of the ceasefire agreement and open the Gaza crossings", the source said.

At the start of the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran on 28 February, Israel reimposed its blockade on Gaza and announced the closure of all crossing points into the enclave.

Before the start of the Iran war, the Rafah border crossing had been open for nearly a month, allowing many wounded Palestinians to enter Egypt for medical treatment and enabling residents to return to Gaza.

After again imposing collective punishment on Gaza, Israel said on Sunday it would partially reopen the Rafah crossing on the border between the Palestinian territory and Egypt.

"The Rafah Crossing will reopen for movement in both directions starting this coming Wednesday (March 18), for limited movement of people only," COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry agency in charge of civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said in a statement.

Israel had previously reopened the Karm Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing in the territory's south to allow the "gradual entry of humanitarian aid".

When the Rafah crossing is closed from the Palestinian side, shipments enter the Egyptian side of the crossing and are then redirected to the Karm Abu Salem crossing, Gaza’s only commercial crossing.

Egypt has remained the main lifeline for Gaza since October 2023, exerting all efforts to ease the suffering of the Palestinian people amid Israel's devastating war on the strip.

Despite the ongoing truce, Israeli bombardment and shelling have killed at least 663 Palestinians since it took effect on 10 October, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023, Israeli forces have killed more than 72,200 Palestinians and injured over 171,800, according to the health ministry.

*This story was edited by Ahram Online.

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