Israel’s attacks on Gaza have killed at least 61 people since dawn, targeting civilians in overcrowded places, because its blocking of more than two months of the besieged and bombed enclave caused acute food shortages, accelerating the famine of the Palestinian population.
A recognition drone strike has targeted an area near Thai and Palmyra restaurants on Al-Wehda Street in Gaza City. Two missiles were fired in two places at the same time, 100 meters from each other, one inside a restaurant and another at the intersection, killing at least 17 people.
Reporting from Gaza City, Hani Mahmoud, Tel Aviv Tribune, said that the Israeli air strike was aimed at one of the few places where the Palestinians could have a meal.
“The tables and chairs are all thrown away and the blood stains the ground due to severe bleeding (due to the attack),” said Mahmoud among a crowd of residents and street vendors examining destruction after the attack.
On the site of another attack which took place at the same time at a neighboring intersection, Mahmoud explained that people were on the ground, “soaked in blood and shredded into pieces”.
On Wednesday, incessant Israeli strikes were dispersed through Gaza, with 13 people killed and several other injured, in a strike targeting the Al-Karama school in the Tuffah district of Gaza City.
Still in the north, three other people were killed and several were injured during a strike in a house in Jabalia.
Eight other people, including a father, children and cousins, were killed in Khan Younis City in the south, including five on strike on a house.
Three other people, including a child, died after a tent refuge was attacked in Deir El-Balah in the Gaza Central Strip. A husband and a woman were also killed when a house was struck in the village of Bani Suheila east of the strip.
The dead included four people who were found under the rubble after an Israeli attack earlier this week on a school that is home to people in the Bureij refugee camp in the center of Gaza. The Palestinian Civil Defense Agency said on Tuesday evening that more than 30 people had been killed and that dozens had injured it.
“Suffering for coverage”
Mahmoud said earlier than the Palestinians “launched themselves to hide” while air strikes and explosions have struck residential buildings and evacuation centers through Gaza.
“We confirmed that a farmer had been killed in the eastern part of Khan Younis, in Abasan, while he was trying to harvest what he managed to plant in the past two months, compensating for the lack of food,” said Mahmoud.
“This is one of the elements that we have seen in a very visible way. Not only do they suffer daily due to famine and forced dehydration, but they try (also) to plant their own food, but they are deprived, and their ability to do so are (thwarted) by the ongoing attacks,” he added.
The intensified attacks have been aggravated by an Israeli blockade on essential supplies since March 2, leaving the private enclave of fuel and food products, including aggravation of flour. Aid groups said the food supply was close to total exhaustion.
A mother of six people closing in a United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza told the agency that they had lacked all types of food, with only available bread.
“The state of Israel must be siege,” wrote Wednesday to X.
“There must be a concerted international effort to prevent this humanitarian disaster from reaching a new invisible level,” he added.
The Gaza health sector is also faced with the weight of current attacks and the blockade, with at least 88% of beds in occupied hospitals and a shortage of medical disposables.
Ceasefire conferences
Wednesday morning, Egypt and Qatar, which both publicized the first cease-fire agreement alongside the United States, reaffirmed their commitment to an agreement aimed at putting an end to the “unprecedented humanitarian crisis and to mitigate the suffering of civilians by promoting the necessary conditions to achieve a full ceasefire”.
“The two countries stress that attempts to seed discord among the fraternal nations – whether by the casting of doubt, distortion or climbing of the media – will not succeed, and will not dissuade the two nations from continuing their joint efforts to end the war and the humanitarian disaster that resulted,” said a joint declaration, adding that the countries were working in the United States agreement.
While Israel has announced that a new, more intense military offensive would start in Gaza unless a cease-fire agreement has been signed, Hamas said that the talks were useless.
“There is no sense to engage in talks or considering new cease-fire proposals as long as the war of hunger and the extermination war are continuing in the Gaza Strip,” the AFP news agency, head of Hamas, told the AFP news agency on Tuesday.
