Gaza’s Interior Ministry says Israel is targeting police personnel with the aim of ‘spreading chaos’ in the Gaza Strip.

The head of the police force in northern Gaza has been killed in an Israeli air strike, while other attacks have claimed the lives of several Palestinians, the Ministry of Interior and medics said.

Brigadier-General Abdel-Nasser al-Maqadma, who also served as governor of northern Gaza, was targeted in the Sheikh Radwan area north of Gaza City on Saturday.

The Israeli army claimed he had been a member of the military wing of Hamas, while Gaza authorities condemned Israel’s repeated targeting of police personnel.

After al-Maqadma’s killing, Gaza’s Interior Ministry said Israel is deliberately targeting the Palestinian police force “with the aim of spreading chaos in the Gaza Strip”.

It added in a statement that 53 police commanders, officers and personnel have been killed in direct Israeli attacks on police headquarters, patrols, vehicles and personnel since the “ceasefire” agreement took effect in October last year.

The ministry called on the international community and mediating countries to intervene urgently and pressure Israel to stop targeting the police, describing the force as “a civilian institution protected under international law” that is responsible for maintaining public order and serving residents.

Across the Strip on Saturday, Israel launched new waves of air strikes, killing several Palestinians and injuring others. At least 20 people were also wounded by Israeli gunfire, medical sources told Al Jazeera.

‘Agony, misery, relentless attacks’

An Israeli air strike targeted a group of civilians outside central Gaza’s largest health facility, the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah, on Saturday. One person was killed and several injured.

“The Israeli military struck the gate of Al-Aqsa Hospital … people are really injured now … and a group of civilians has been hit in this small shop [opposite the hospital gate],” Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reported from the scene.

“This has been one of the bloodiest days here in central and northern Gaza. The Israeli military has been scaling up the attacks … This is another chapter of agony, misery and relentless attacks,” he added.

Israeli strikes also killed a Palestinian medic in the Nuseirat refugee camp, and two people in a house in Khan Younis on Saturday. Israel’s military claimed the house was attacked to target a member of the Islamic Jihad group.

Later in the day, another strike on Khan Younis killed recent high school graduate, Khaled al-Breim. Relatives said he was killed as he sought to bring ⁠sweets to distribute to relatives and friends who had flocked into his family home to offer their congratulations as he had just concluded high school and was preparing for university.

Separately, in the al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, a Palestinian man named Suleiman Taysir Shammoud died from his injuries after being targeted in an Israeli strike, according to Quds News Network and the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

A policeman who was wounded by an Israeli strike last week also died from his injuries on Saturday.

Amid the attacks on Gaza’s police personnel, the Interior Ministry has pledged that the police will continue carrying out their duties.

Hamas has also accused Israel of deliberately targeting the police force to destabilise the enclave, calling it a further breach of the United States-brokered “ceasefire”.

The ceasefire deal has been mostly ignored by Israel. Since the truce agreement was signed, Israeli attacks have killed more than 1,180 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. Over the same period, four Israeli soldiers have been killed in attacks in Gaza.