Israeli forces continued to shell several areas of the besieged Gaza Strip, killing dozens of Palestinians, while residents reported nighttime attacks in Rafah, in the south of the enclave.
Israeli attacks in Gaza have killed 60 Palestinians and injured 140 in the past 24 hours, the Gaza health ministry said on Wednesday.
Many victims were left trapped under the rubble, with ambulances and medics unable to reach them.
Residents said fighting intensified in the Tal as-Sultan neighborhood west of Rafah, where tanks were also trying to make their way north amid heavy clashes. The armed wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad said their fighters attacked Israeli forces with anti-tank rockets and mortar shells.
Since early May, ground fighting has focused on Rafah, on Egypt’s southern border, where about half of the enclave’s 2.3 million residents had taken refuge after fleeing other areas. Since then, most have had to flee again.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah, said the previous 24 hours had been “violent, bloody and quite brutal for Palestinians in Gaza.”
“There have been more attacks on densely populated areas, whether in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, in the central area of Nuseirat or further into southern Gaza, where the Israeli army continues to ‘operate aggressively, systematically destroying and demolishing residential areas. houses in the town of Rafah,” Mahmoud said.
Two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli missile attack in Rafah, doctors say.
The Israeli military said in a statement that its forces killed a Hamas fighter and that planes struck dozens of targets in Rafah overnight, including fighters, military structures and tunnel shafts.
Later on Wednesday, an Israeli attack killed eight Palestinians and injured others near the Jabalia camp in the northern Gaza Strip, one of eight historic refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli news agency reported. Palestinian news agency Wafa.
In the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, tank shells hit an apartment, killing at least five people and injuring others, medics said.
More than eight months after the start of the Israeli attack on Gaza, international mediation supported by the United States, Qatar and Egypt has failed to produce a ceasefire agreement. Hamas says any agreement must end the war and Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza, while Israel says it will only accept temporary pauses in fighting until Hamas is eradicated.
“Dehydration and starvation”
In the northern Gaza Strip, Palestinians are complaining of a severe food shortage and soaring prices. Health officials said thousands of children were suffering from malnutrition, which has already claimed at least 30 lives since October 7.
“There is only flour and canned goods, there is nothing else to eat, no vegetables, no meat and no milk,” said Abu Mustafa, who lives in the town of Gaza with his family.
Their house was hit last week by an Israeli tank shell, which destroyed most of the upper floor.
“Besides the bombings, another Israeli war is taking place in northern Gaza: famine. People meet on the street and many cannot recognize each other because of their weight loss and older appearance,” Abou Mustafa told Reuters news agency.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s Mahmoud said “many areas of Gaza already struggle with forced dehydration and starvation on a daily basis.”
“Even if we say… the bomb stops falling, people are going to die because of the dire situation in Gaza,” he said.
The Gaza Strip remains at high risk of famine, although the delivery of some aid has limited the expected spread of extreme hunger in northern areas, a global observer said Tuesday.
More than 495,000 people in the Gaza Strip are facing the most severe, or “catastrophic”, level of food insecurity, according to an update of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a global partnership used by the United Nations and humanitarian agencies.
Separately, the UN humanitarian chief said demands for unhindered humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip still stood.
“We want all these crossing points open, we want safety and security protocols, we want deconfliction that we can count on, and we want humanitarian workers and health institutions not to fall victim to the war,” said Martin Griffiths, who heads the Health Bureau. the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), told journalists in Geneva on Wednesday.
He also called for a ceasefire.
Griffiths expressed concern about the possible spread of the war in Gaza across the region, including the occupied West Bank.
The West Bank, where the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority exercises limited autonomy under Israeli occupation, has already experienced its worst unrest in decades, alongside the assault on Gaza, due to an increase in mass arrests by Israeli forces and an increase in the number of Israeli settlers. violence.
The UN human rights office said 528 Palestinians, including 133 children, have been killed by Israeli security forces or settlers in the West Bank since the assault on Gaza began, and has “serious concerns about unlawful killings” in some cases.
“We are concerned about the potential for further tragedies and deaths and the events in the West Bank, as well as, of course, the threats and possibilities (of conflict) in Lebanon,” Griffiths said.
“There is a lot of preparation on the aid side. That’s not the problem,” he said. “The problem is to prevent this war from getting worse and depriving the Palestinian people of their right to their future. This is the concern I think we should all have.
