Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Wednesday that Israeli attacks killed at least 74 Palestinians and wounded 391 over the previous 24-hour period as the daily US-backed slaughter continues.
The Health Ministry said another five bodies of Palestinians killed in previous attacks were recovered. “There are still a number of victims under the rubble and on the streets, and ambulance and civil defense crews cannot reach them,” the ministry wrote on Telegram.
Medical sources told Al Jazeera that at least 14 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire while waiting near aid distribution sites run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. According to the Health Ministry, at least 549 Palestinians have been massacred while seeking aid since the GHF began operating at the end of May.
Heavy Israeli airstrikes and shelling also pounded targets across the Strip. According to the Palestinian news agency WAFA, at least 15 people were killed by Israeli shelling in the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis. In Gaza City in the north, WAFA reported that at least eight people were killed by Israeli bombings of residential areas.
Al Jazeera reported that five people were killed in an Israeli strike on a home in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, and another three Palestinians were killed by an Israeli attack in the nearby Nuseirat refugee camp.
On Tuesday, seven Israeli soldiers were killed in a Hamas ambush in Khan Younis. According to Israeli media, the troops were killed when an explosive was detonated and set an armored personnel carrier on fire. Hamas’s military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, took credit for destroying a “Zionist personnel carrier.”
The Health Ministry said the latest violence has brought the death toll since October 7, 2023, to 56,156 and the number of wounded to 132,239. Studies have shown that the Health Ministry’s numbers are a significant undercount, and estimates that factor in indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege and destruction of all of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure bring the death toll into the hundreds of thousands.
