Shelling of Deir al-Balah apartment kills 3, Palestinian reports say

Three people were killed and dozens wounded when an Israeli shell struck an apartment in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on Friday, according to Palestinian reports relayed by two Israeli outlets. Abu Ali Express, a Hebrew-language Telegram channel that monitors Arab media, reported that Palestinians were describing 3 dead and 25 wounded after a mortar round fired by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) hit a flat in the Al-Qastal towers in the eastern part of the city.

Haaretz, citing several Arab news outlets, reported that Israeli artillery fire killed three people in Deir al-Balah, among them a woman, and a father together with his son, whom it described as 12 years old. Haaretz put the number of wounded at no fewer than 20. Neither outlet said it had confirmed the casualty figures itself; both attributed them to Palestinian or Arab sources.

Where the strike was reported

Deir al-Balah is a city in the middle section of the Gaza Strip, the coastal territory between Israel and Egypt. The Abu Ali Express post placed the impact more precisely than the other report, naming a residential complex known as the Al-Qastal towers and locating it on the eastern side of the city. Haaretz did not name a building or neighbourhood, referring only to Deir al-Balah in the central part of the Strip.

The Telegram channel published its item on the afternoon of 13 November 2026 and posted the same text again roughly an hour and a half later. Haaretz followed in the evening, filing the story under its coverage of the Israel-Gaza war.

Who is reporting, and on what basis

Both organisations are Israeli, but neither presented the account as its own reporting from the scene. Abu Ali Express framed its post explicitly as what Palestinians are reporting. Haaretz likewise sourced its figures to Arab media, and its headline opens with the word "Reports". The underlying Palestinian and Arab sources were not named in either piece.

That matters for readers weighing the figures. Two Israeli outlets independently picked up the same incident, which suggests it was widely reported in Arab media that day, but the death toll, the injury count and the identities of the victims all trace back to sources inside Gaza that have not been identified in the material available to us.

Where the accounts differ

The two reports agree on the place, the day and the number of dead. They diverge on two points.

• The weapon. Abu Ali Express described a mortar shell. Haaretz described artillery shelling. Mortars are a short-range, high-angle form of indirect fire, while "artillery" is often used more broadly for heavier guns; the reports do not explain the difference in wording, and we have not resolved it.
• The wounded. Abu Ali Express gave a figure of 25 injured. Haaretz said at least 20. The two numbers are not necessarily contradictory, since one is framed as a minimum, but they come from different relays of Palestinian reporting and have not been reconciled by either outlet.

Only Haaretz gave any detail about who was killed: a woman, a man and his young son. Abu Ali Express gave numbers only.

What the Israeli military has said

Neither report included a response from the IDF, and neither said whether the military had been asked about the incident. Neither report described any military activity in the area that might have preceded the strike, nor any claim about a target.

What the reports do not say

The reports leave several gaps a reader would want filled. There is no IDF statement confirming or disputing that its forces fired on the building, and no account of what, if anything, was being targeted. The victims have not been named. The Palestinian or Arab outlets that first reported the casualties are not identified, so the original source of the figures cannot be checked. The discrepancy over whether the round was a mortar or an artillery shell, and over whether 25 or at least 20 people were wounded, remains open. Neither report gives the time of the strike.