The Israeli military killed at least 39 Palestinians in overnight strikes across the Gaza Strip, including at least 21 in an attack that burned tents sheltering displaced Palestinian families in an overcrowded camp, doctors said.
Residents carry a body wrapped in carpets from the charred ruins of makeshift shelters in al-Mawasi, near the beach west of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, where tens of thousands have been sheltering for months. Israel calls the area a “safe zone”, but has repeatedly attacked displacement tents in the area.
Mourners said the latest attacks came late in a new declaration by international human rights group Amnesty International that Israel was guilty of genocide in Gaza.
Gaza medics said women and children were among the 21 killed in the Israeli attack. Israel claimed the strike targeted senior Hamas members, without identifying them.
Later on Thursday, Hussam Abu Safia, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, north of the enclave, said a 16-year-old boy who used a wheelchair was killed and several people, including a doctor, were wounded in the drone strike. In a medical facility.
Three hospitals operating on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip have come under repeated attacks since Israeli forces sent tanks in a renewed ground attack and siege in October on the towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun and the nearby Jabalia refugee camp, the health ministry said. over northern Gaza.
The siege has exacerbated an already dire humanitarian situation, with drought and a collapsed health system.
‘Stop this crazy war’
The strike in al-Mawasi burned several large tents and exploded cooking gas canisters and burning furniture fueled the fire. The area was littered with charred clothes, mattresses and other items amid the twisted frames of burnt shelters.
“In this situation we do not see anyone from the entire world standing by us or helping us. Let them stop this mad war against us. Let them stop fighting,” said Abu Kamal al-Assar, a witness at the scene.
Al Jazeera’s Tarek Abu Azoum, reporting from the scene of the attack in Khan Younis, said the strike “captures the tragic calamity that Palestinians are really experiencing, especially since there are no places or shelters across the Gaza Strip.” .
The attack came on the same day that Amnesty International released a report saying Israel’s actions in Gaza met the definition of the crime of genocide. Israel strongly rejected the accusation, condemning Amnesty as a “deplorable and fanatical organization”. A key ally, the United States, also rejected the amnesty charge.
As relatives wept over the white-shrouded bodies at a funeral in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, resident Abu Anas Mustafa called the Amnesty report a “victory for Palestinian diplomacy,” though it came too late.
“Today is the 430th day of the war, and Israel has been waging massacres and genocide since the first 10 days of the war,” he said.
Israeli strikes hit Gaza City on Thursday, where a medic attack destroyed a house where an extended family was sheltering and damaged two nearby houses, killing at least three people.
In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, an Israeli attack killed three Palestinians on Thursday, medics said. Three others were killed in a separate airstrike in Shujaya, an eastern Gaza city, he said.
Israel launched its offensive on Gaza in October last year, forcing nearly 2.3 million residents from their homes. More than 44,500 Palestinians were killed, with thousands more buried under the rubble.
Bassem Naim, an official at Hamas’s political bureau, said international mediators had resumed talks with the group and Israel on a possible cease-fire in Gaza, and he gave assurances that an agreement was within reach.
Ceasefire talks were suspended last month when Qatar suspended talks with mediators from Egypt and the United States, frustrated by a lack of progress.
But Naim said in recent days there had been a “reactivation” of efforts to end the fighting, release detainees from Gaza and free Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
