Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Wednesday that Israeli attacks killed 105 Palestinians and wounded 530 over the previous 24-hour period, as US-backed Israeli strikes continue to pound targets across the besieged Strip despite talk of a potential ceasefire deal.
Israeli forces also continued to shoot at desperate Palestinians seeking aid, killing at least seven. The latest aid-related killings bring the total number of Palestinians killed while seeking food since the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began operating to 773, according to the Health Ministry. Another 5,101 aid seekers have been injured.
Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday included the bombing of a tent in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, which killed 10 members of the Shabaan family. “I found all my children dead, and my daughters’ three children dead,” the mother of the Shabaan children who were killed in the attack told The Associated Press. “It’s supposed to be a safe area where we were.”
Israeli strikes also hit the Shati refugee camp west of Gaza City, killing at least 30 people, including many children. “A whole neighborhood collapsed,” Ismail al-Bardawil, a survivor of the attack, told Al Jazeera.
“Seven little kids died here. Over there, 10 more children. The only adult was an old man, around 70 years old. What was their fault?” al-Bardawil said. “There were no fighters here – not a single one. We honestly don’t know what to do. We’re still searching for our children.”
The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that three Palestinians, including an infant, were killed in another Israeli attack on an apartment in western Gaza City.
Hamas’s armed wing, the al-Qassams Brigades, said that its fighters clashed with IDF troops in southern Gaza and claimed one Israeli soldier was killed. The Israeli military has ramped up its attacks on the Strip since five of its soldiers were killed in an ambush in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza, where the IDF is now conducting a major assault.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said that the latest violence has brought the death toll since October 7, 2023, to 57,680 and the number of wounded to 137,409. 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.
