Israeli strike kills top Gaza rescue service official

An Israeli air strike on a house in Jabalia has killed Mohammad Morsi, deputy director of the Gaza Civil Emergency Service in the northern areas of the Gaza Strip, and four of his family, health officials say.

The Civil Emergency Service said in a statement on Sunday Morsi's death raised to 83 the number of its members killed by Israeli fire since October 7.

There was no immediate Israeli comment on Morsi's death.

Residents said Israeli forces had also blown up several houses in the Zeitoun suburb of Gaza City, 5km from Jabalia.

Medical teams said they were unable to answer desperate calls by some of the residents who had reported being trapped inside their houses, some wounded.

"We hear constant bombing in Zeitoun," said one resident of Gaza City, who lives about 1km away.

"We know they are blowing up houses there.

"We don't sleep because of the sounds of explosions - the roaring of tanks sound close and the drones don't stop circling

"The occupation is wiping out Zeitoun.

"We are afraid about the people trapped in there," the resident told Reuters via a chat app, refusing to be named.

Israel and Hamas continued to blame one another for the failure of mediators, including Qatar, Egypt and the US, to broker a ceasefire.

The US is preparing to present a new proposal, but the prospects of a breakthrough appear dim as gaps between the sides' positions remain large.

Israeli authorities said a gunman killed three Israeli civilians in an attack near the Allenby Bridge border crossing with Jordan on Sunday before security forces shot him dead.

"A terrorist approached the area of the Allenby Bridge from Jordan in a truck, exited the truck, and opened fire at the Israeli security forces operating at the bridge," the Israeli military said.

"The terrorist was eliminated by the security forces.

"Three Israeli civilians were pronounced dead as a result of the attack," it said.

The border crossing, also known as the King Hussein Bridge, lies about midway between Amman and Jerusalem, north of the Dead Sea.

Jordan had closed the bridge crossing with the occupied West Bank as it investigated the shooting, a Jordanian official told Reuters.

The incident occurred in a commercial cargo area under Israeli control where Jordanian trucks offload cargo entering the occupied West Bank from the kingdom.

Also on Sunday, the United Nations, in collaboration with local health authorities, extended by a day a campaign to vaccinate children in the southern Gaza Strip against polio before it moves on Monday to the north.

The campaign aims to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza after its first polio case in about 25 years.

Limited pauses in the fighting have allowed the campaign to proceed.

UN officials said they were making progress, having reached more than half of the children needing the drops in the first two stages in the southern and central Gaza Strip.

A second round of vaccination will be required four weeks after the first.

The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on October 7 when the Hamas group attacked Israel, killing 1200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's subsequent assault on Gaza has killed more than 40,900 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while also displacing almost the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court, which Israel denies.

The Palestinian health ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants in its casualty reports, but health officials say most of the fatalities have been civilians.

Israel, which has lost 340 soldiers in Gaza, says at least a third of the Palestinian dead are fighters.