Hospital officials say Israeli strikes killed 12 in Gaza, including 2 children and a pregnant woman

CAIRO (AP) — At least 12 Palestinians, including two boys, a pregnant woman and eight police officers, were killed Sunday by Israeli airstrikes in the war-torn Gaza Strip, hospital authorities said.

A strike Sunday morning hit a house in the urban refugee camp of Nuseirat in central Gaza and killed four people, including a couple in their 30s and their 10-year son, according to the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. The woman had been pregnant with twins, the hospital said.

The fourth fatality, a 15-year-old neighbor, was taken to the Awda hospital in Nuseirat.

“We were sleeping and got up to the strike of a missile. The strike was strong,” said Mahmoud al-Muhtaseb, a neighbor. “There was no prior warning.”

Another strike Sunday afternoon hit a police vehicle on the south-north Salah al-Din route at the entrance of the central town of Zawaida, the Hamas-run Interior Ministry said.

The strike killed eight police officers, including Col. Iyad Ab Yousef, a senior police official in central Gaza, the ministry said.

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which received the bodies, confirmed the toll. It said 14 others were wounded.

The Israeli military said it struck a Hamas militant Sunday in response to an earlier incident in which a militant opened fire at troops. It didn’t provide further details.

Hamas oversees a police force that maintained a high degree of public security after the militants seized power in Gaza in 2007, while also cracking down on dissent.

The police largely melted away during the war as Israeli forces seized large areas of Gaza and targeted Hamas security forces with airstrikes.

But following an October ceasefire, they have reappeared in Gaza streets and reasserted control in areas not controlled by the Israeli military.

Sunday's deaths were the latest fatalities among Palestinians in the coastal enclave since the ceasefire deal attempted to halt a more than two-year war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

While the heaviest fighting has subsided, the ceasefire has still seen almost daily Israeli fire. Israeli forces have carried out repeated airstrikes and frequently fire on Palestinians near military-held zones, killing more than 650 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.

Israel says it has responded to violations of the ceasefire or targeted wanted militants. But about half of those killed have been women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

They were among more than 72,200 Palestinians killed in the war, which was triggered when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The militant attack killed over 1,200 people and took over 250 others hostage.

The health ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. But it does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants.

Militants have carried out shooting attacks on troops, and Israel says its strikes are in response to that and other violations. Four Israeli soldiers have been killed since the ceasefire.

Separately, Israel announced it will allow the reopening of Gaza’s Rafah crossing with Egypt starting Wednesday after more than two-week hiatus.

COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of coordinating aid to Gaza, said in a statement that the crossing will resume operations with “limited” passenger traffic in both directions. No cargo will be allowed through the crossing, it said.

COGAT said procedures will be the same as before the crossing closed after Israel and the U.S. launched devastating strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, triggering an expanding war in the region.

Since its opening earlier this year, Israel allowed a limited evacuation of patients and wounded people for treatment outside Gaza - a fraction of more than 20,000 requiring medical evacuations, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Some Palestinian who were treated in Egypt during the war were also allowed to return to the strip. Some of the returnees reported abuses by Israeli troops once they crossed the Palestinian gate of the crossing.

A boy pushes a bicycle carrying jerrycans of water through a sandstorm in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) — Jury selection began Monday in the trial of a former assistant principal in Virginia accused of ignoring warnings that a 6-year-old student brought a loaded gun to school that was later used to shoot his first grade teacher.

Ebony Parker is charged with eight counts of felony child neglect, one for each of the bullets in the gun brought into Richneck Elementary schoolteacher Abby Zwerner 's classroom in Newport News in January 2023, prosecutors have said. Each count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison upon conviction.

The charges allege Parker “did commit a willful act or omission in the care of such students, in a manner so gross, wanton and culpable as to show a reckless disregard for human life,” according to court documents.

Parker's attorneys were in court Monday morning and could not be reached for comment about her defense. But her attorneys in a civil trial last year argued that the shooting was “unforeseeable.” They argued Parker did not have a legal duty to protect Zwerner and told the jury in that case "the law requires you to examine people’s decisions at the time they make them.”

Criminal charges against school officials after a school shooting are quite rare, experts say. The shooting sent shock waves through this military shipbuilding community and the country at large, with many wondering how a child so young could gain access to a gun and shoot his teacher.

Last November, a jury awarded $10 million to Zwerner, siding with her claims in a lawsuit that Parker ignored repeated warnings that the child had a gun.

Zwerner was shot as she sat at a reading table in her classroom. She spent nearly two weeks in the hospital, required six surgeries and does not have the full use of her left hand. A bullet narrowly missed her heart and remains in her chest.

Parker was the only defendant in the lawsuit. A judge previously dismissed the district’s superintendent and the school principal as defendants.

The lawsuit said Parker had a duty to protect Zwerner and others from harm after being told about the gun. Zwerner’s attorneys said Parker failed to act in the hours before the shooting after several school staff members told her that the student had a gun in his backpack.

Zwerner testified she first heard about the gun from a reading specialist who had been tipped off by students. The shooting occurred a few hours later. Despite her injuries, Zwerner was able to hustle her students out of the classroom. She eventually passed out in the school office.

Zwerner is scheduled to testify in the criminal case, according to court records.

The student’s mother was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for felony child neglect and federal weapons charges. Her son told authorities he climbed to the top of a dresser to retrieve the gun from his mother's purse.

FILE - Former Richneck Elementary School assistant principal Ebony Parker looks back into the courtroom during Abby Zwerner's lawsuit against her on Oct. 28, 2025, in Newport News, Va. (Stephen M. Katz/The Virginian-Pilot via AP, Pool, File)