Israeli forces attack towns and refugee camps, killing up to 80 people and forcing thousands more to flee.
At least 20 Palestinians were killed, including women and children, when an Israeli strike hit a residential building near the Kuwait Specialized Hospital in Rafah, as the besieged Gaza Strip recovered from a barrage of attacks that killed dozens of people throughout the day.
“The airstrike completely razed the residential building that was overflowing with displaced people,” said Tel Aviv Tribune correspondent Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting on the aftermath of Thursday’s Israeli strike near a Kuwaiti hospital.
“So far, rescue operations carried out by ambulances and civil protection teams continue to pull people from the rubble.”
Palestinian authorities said Thursday that at least 50 people were killed in Israeli bombardments in all corners of Gaza, where more than 21,320 Palestinians were killed and nearly 90 percent of the population displaced.
Israel intensified its attacks across the Gaza Strip, targeting Beit Lahiya, Khan Younis, Rafah and Maghazi on Thursday, despite global outrage and calls for a ceasefire over the rising death toll.
Palestinians in the besieged enclave said they had nowhere to safely flee. Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesman for Gaza’s health ministry, said Thursday that more than 200 people had been killed in 24 hours and entire families wiped out.
More than 55,000 Palestinians have been injured since Israel launched a military offensive following the October 7 Hamas attacks in southern Israel, which killed nearly 1,200 people – the deadliest attack in the country since its creation in 1948.
The Israeli attack on Gaza has become one of the most destructive in modern history, taking a huge humanitarian toll and sparking accusations of a campaign of collective punishment against Palestinian civilians.
An Israeli official on Thursday blamed the high death toll in the Christmas Eve attack on the Maghazi refugee camp on improper munitions. More than 70 people were killed in the attack, which sparked global outrage.
Nearly three months after fighting began, Hamas fighters continue to put up fierce resistance to Israeli forces, including in northern Gaza, where continued Israeli strikes have rendered the area unrecognizable.
The Israeli siege also severely restricted access to food, fuel, water and electricity, and U.N. officials said about 25 percent of Gaza residents were starving.
“It’s hard enough as it is, to find your daily meal, to find drinking water, with so many people gathered in one town,” Mohammed Thabet, a resident of Gaza, told Abu Azzoum after the Rafah strike.
“Being so close to the Egyptian border, in the far south of the Gaza Strip, people feel like they have nothing else to do, just wait and hope the best. »
When asked if he felt safe in southern Gaza, Thabet replied: “After everything we have seen, not at all. There is nowhere safe in Gaza.
The United States has played an indispensable role in Israel’s war, providing it with batches of weapons and significant diplomatic support as Israel comes under increasing pressure to end the fighting.
Israel has vowed to continue, widening its offensive and moving further south toward areas where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge.