Israeli Forces Bomb Gaza ‘Safe Zone’, Kill Women and Children
At least 49 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli attacks since the early hours of Tuesday morning, medical sources said, Al Jazeera reported on Wednesday.
The dead included at least five children killed by Israeli strikes on tents sheltering displaced people in al-Mawasi – a desolate coastal area in southern Gaza designated a “humanitarian safe zone” by the Israeli military.
Despite hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinian civilians crammed into makeshift tent camps in al-Mawasi, Israel’s military has continually attacked the site, claiming, without providing evidence, that it is targeting Hamas.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health said late on Tuesday that Israeli forces had carried out three “massacres” of Palestinian families in the past 24 hours, in which 31 people were killed and 57 were wounded.
The overall death toll from Israeli attacks on the territory had now risen to 45,885 people killed and more than 109,000 injured in the 15 months since Israel’s war on the enclave began, on October 7, 2023.
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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 as they sheltered together in al-Mawasi.
Their bodies were among the eight children and five women brought to the hospital on Tuesday. 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 unidentifiable.
In the hospital’s morgue, bodies lay on stretchers or were stacked on metal shelves. A young girl in a fuzzy pink sweatshirt rested with her head in the lap of another dead child. Other corpses, some disfigured by Israeli explosions, were covered in blankets, the AP reports.
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Tom Fletcher, the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and the coordinator for emergency relief, said in a statement that attempts by aid workers to save lives in Gaza were “at breaking point”.
Fletcher recounted how Israeli forces had recently attacked a food distribution point operated by a partner of the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), injuring three people. Israeli troops had also fired 16 bullets at a clearly marked UN convoy. And Palestinian gangs had hijacked six fuel tankers, leaving hardly any for humanitarian operations.
“These incidents are part of a dangerous pattern of sabotage and deliberate disruption,” Fletcher said.
“Statements by Israeli authorities vilify our aid workers even as the military attacks them. Community volunteers who accompany our convoys are being targeted,” he said.
“There is now a perception that it is dangerous to protect aid convoys but safe to loot them,” he added.
Source: Al Jazeera
