‘Massacres’: Women, children killed as Israel bombs ‘safe zone’ in Gaza | News from Gaza
Al Jazeera’s correspondent says fear reigns in Gaza as Israeli attacks intensify, targeting the al-Mawasi ‘humanitarian safe zone’.
Scores of women and young children are reported to have been killed in the latest Israeli attacks on Gaza, with nearly 50 killed and dozens wounded in one day as the total death toll in the war-torn Palestinian territory approaches 46,000.
Medical sources told Al Jazeera that at least 49 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes since the early hours of Tuesday morning.
The dead included at least five children killed in Israeli attacks on tents housing displaced people in al-Mawasi – a desolate coastal area in southern Gaza that the Israeli military has designated a “humanitarian safe zone”.
Despite the hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinian civilians crammed into makeshift tent camps in al-Mawasi, the Israeli military continues to attack the site, claiming, without providing evidence, that it is targeting Hamas.
Gaza’s health ministry said late Tuesday that Israeli forces had carried out three “massacres” of Palestinian families in the past 24 hours, killing 31 people and wounding 57 others.
The total death toll from Israeli attacks on the territory has 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.
Ahmed al-Farra, director of the children’s department at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, told the Associated Press (AP) news agency that five children were killed in the same tent while they were sheltering together in al-Mawasi.
Their bodies were among eight children and five women brought to the hospital on Tuesday. A car and two residential houses in the Khan Younis area were also hit in the Israeli strikes, the hospital said, adding that the two killed in the strikes were men, while the two people killed in the vehicle were unknown.
In the hospital morgue, bodies lay on stretchers or were stacked on metal shelves. A young girl in a fuzzy pink T-shirt rested with her head on the lap of another dead child. Other corpses, some disfigured by Israeli explosions, were covered with blankets, reports AP.
Al Jazeera’s central Gaza correspondent, Tareq Abu Azzoum, said Israeli attacks had “intensified” across Gaza in 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 aid convoys and the hijacking of fuel tankers by “Palestinian criminal groups”, threatening the area’s already struggling hospitals.
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 in central Gaza, also reported that it would be forced to cut its electricity supply due to fuel shortages caused by Israeli restrictions on supplies to Gaza and hijackings.
“So the scene on the ground is somewhat chaotic and the atmosphere is quite charged with fear and anticipation of new airstrikes that are also looming on the horizon,” Abu Azzoum said.
Tom Fletcher, the United Nations under-secretary for humanitarian affairs and emergency coordinator, said in a statement that aid workers’ efforts to save lives in Gaza were “at a tipping point.”
Fletcher said Israeli forces recently attacked a food distribution point run by a UN World Food Program (WFP) partner, injuring three people. Israeli troops also fired 16 rounds at a clearly marked UN convoy. And Palestinian gangs hijacked six fuel tankers, leaving almost nothing for humanitarian operations.
“These incidents are part of a dangerous pattern of sabotage and deliberate disruption,” Fletcher said.
“The statements of the Israeli authorities denigrate our humanitarian workers even though the army is attacking them. Community volunteers who accompany our convoys are targeted,” he said.
“Now there is a perception that it is dangerous to protect aid convoys, but safe to rob them,” he added.
