Drone strike on a home courtyard in Deir al-Balah kills a man

One man was killed and several other people were wounded on Saturday when an Israeli drone struck the courtyard of a house in Deir al-Balah, in the centre of the Gaza Strip, a medical source said. Witnesses put the strike in the Al-Bassa area of the city and said the munition came down in the yard of the home rather than on the building itself.

Local reports named the man killed as Sharif al-Hasanat, and said he was in the courtyard of his own house when the drone fired. No figure was given for how many of those hurt alongside him needed hospital treatment.

The Israeli military said later in the day that it had killed a company commander in a Deir al-Balah battalion of the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, and identified him as al-Hasanat. A post issued in its name said he had been "eliminated". It published no evidence for the description, and gave no account of the other people wounded in the yard.

A Palestinian child was shot and wounded with live ammunition the same day in Beit Lahia, in the north of the Strip. The severity of his injuries was not established.

The Ministry of Health said two Palestinians had been killed across the Strip in the previous 48 hours, and put the number killed since the ceasefire took effect on 10 October 2025 at 1,285, with 4,252 wounded. Its cumulative count since October 2023 stands at 73,419 killed and 174,364 wounded.

Deir al-Balah is one of the places families were moved into and told they could remain. A strike that lands in a domestic courtyard reaches people at the one point in the day when they are not sheltering from anything, and the label attached to the dead afterwards arrives too late to be tested against what the neighbours saw.