Gaza’s Health Ministry said Thursday that Israeli attacks killed at least 62 Palestinians over the previous 24-hour period as relentless US-backed strikes pounded targets across the Strip.
The Health Ministry said another five bodies of Palestinians killed by previous Israeli attacks were recovered from the rubble. The ministry’s numbers are based on dead and wounded Palestinians brought to hospitals, but it said its figures didn’t “include hospitals in the North Gaza Strip Governorate due to the difficulty of accessing them.”
Israeli attacks on Thursday included heavy strikes on the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, which killed at least 23 Palestinians. In Jabalia, northern Gaza, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that Israeli strikes hit a home and a kindergarten sheltering displaced people, killing at least seven, including women and children.
WAFA also reported that at least ten people were killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza City. In the southern city of Khan Younis, Israeli attacks reportedly killed a man and his pregnant wife.
Also on Thursday, the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) opened a third aid distribution point in central Gaza near the Israeli-controlled Netzarim Corridor. The aid scheme has been widely condemned by the UN and other aid agencies that operate in Gaza as insufficient to feed the starving population after an 11-week total blockade.
Al Jazeera reported that many Palestinians who arrived at the new distribution point were unable to leave due to Israeli military activity. “Many of the people who showed up at the site are trapped right now and unable to leave the area due to the presence of Israeli tanks and armored vehicles [and] the ongoing shooting,” said Al Jazeera reporter Hani Mahmoud.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said that since Israel resumed its genocidal war on March 18, at least 3,986 Palestinians have been killed, and 11,451 were injured. The numbers account for dead and wounded Palestinians brought to hospitals and morgues.
Since October 7, 2023, the ministry’s death toll has reached 54,249, and the number of wounded has climbed to 123,492, figures that don’t account for thousands missing and presumed dead under the rubble or indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege.
