Tel Aviv Tribune correspondent says fear dominates Gaza as Israeli attacks intensify, targeting al-Mawasi “humanitarian security zone”.
Scores of women and young children are believed to have been killed in the latest Israeli attacks on Gaza, with nearly 50 people killed and dozens injured in a single day, as the overall death toll in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory rises. approaching 46,000.
Medical sources told Tel Aviv Tribune that at least 49 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli attacks since the early hours of Tuesday morning.
The dead include at least five children killed by Israeli strikes on tents housing displaced people in al-Mawasi – a desolate coastal area in southern Gaza designated a “humanitarian security zone” by the Israeli military.
Despite hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinian civilians crowded into makeshift tent camps at al-Mawasi, the Israeli military continually attacked the site, claiming, without providing evidence, that it was targeting Hamas.
Gaza’s health ministry said Tuesday evening that Israeli forces had carried out three “massacres” of Palestinian families in the past 24 hours, in which 31 people were killed and 57 injured.
The overall toll of Israeli attacks on the territory now stands at 45,885 people killed and more than 109,000 injured in the 15 months since the start of the Israeli war against the enclave on October 7, 2023.
Ahmed al-Farra, director of the children’s ward at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, told the Associated Press (AP) news agency that five children were killed in the same tent while sheltering together in al-Mawasi.
Their bodies were among eight children and five women taken to hospital on Tuesday. The Israeli strikes also hit a car and two residential houses in the Khan Younis area, the hospital said, adding that two of those killed in the attacks were men, while two people killed in the vehicle were not. were not identifiable.
In the hospital morgue, bodies lay on stretchers or were stacked on metal shelves. A young girl in a fuzzy pink sweatshirt rested her head in the lap of another dead child. Other bodies, some disfigured by Israeli explosions, were covered with blankets, the AP reports.
Tel Aviv Tribune correspondent in central Gaza, Tareq Abu Azzoum, said Israeli attacks had “intensified” across Gaza over the past 12 hours, particularly in the al-Mawasi area.
The hardships suffered by Palestinians in Gaza have also been exacerbated by Israel’s continued attacks on humanitarian aid convoys and the hijacking of tanker trucks by “Palestinian criminal gangs”, which have put hospitals in the territory at risk. already in difficulty.
The European Hospital in Khan Younis has now warned that it will run out of fuel in the next 24 hours, Abu Azzoum said. Al-Aqsa Hospital, in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, also reported that it would be forced to cut electricity due to fuel shortages caused by Israeli restrictions on the delivery of supplies in Gaza and the hijackings.
“The scene on the ground is therefore a bit chaotic and the atmosphere is rather charged with fear and anticipation of further airstrikes which are also looming on the horizon,” Abou Azzoum said.
Tom Fletcher, UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, said in a statement that aid workers’ attempts to save lives in Gaza were “at breaking point”.
Fletcher recounted how Israeli forces recently attacked a food distribution point run by a partner of the UN’s World Food Program (WFP), injuring three people. Israeli troops also fired 16 bullets at a clearly identified UN convoy. And Palestinian gangs had hijacked six fuel trucks, leaving virtually none for humanitarian operations.
“These incidents are part of a dangerous pattern of sabotage and deliberate disruption,” Fletcher said.
“Statements by Israeli authorities slander our aid workers even as the army attacks them. Community volunteers who accompany our convoys are targeted,” he said.
“We now have the impression that it is dangerous to protect humanitarian convoys but that it is prudent to loot them,” he added.
