Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Tuesday that Israeli attacks killed at least 88 Palestinians and wounded 278 over the previous 24-hour period as relentless US-backed Israeli strikes continue to massacre women and children in the besieged territory.
The Health Ministry said that another five bodies were recovered from the rubble. “A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the streets, where ambulance and civil defense crews are unable to reach them at this time,” the ministry wrote on Telegram.
Officials at the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City told The Associated Press that strikes included the bombing of a building in the Shati refugee camp that killed a 68-year-old Hamas legislative official, meaning he was not a militant. The strike also killed a man, a woman, and their six children, who were sheltering in the same building.
The al-Shia Hospital also said that an Israeli strike on Monday night hit a home in Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa district, killing 19 members of the same family, including eight women and six children. A strike on a tent in the same area killed a man, a woman, and their two children.
Israeli troops have also continued to kill Palestinians seeking aid. According to the Health Ministry, at least six people were killed and 29 were wounded while trying to reach food over the past 24 hours, bringing the aid-related death toll since the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began to 844 and the number of wounded to 5,604.
The Israeli military has admitted to killing civilians near aid sites but disputes the death toll, although the UN is reporting a higher number. The UN said on Tuesday that it has recorded at least 875 aid-related deaths in the past six weeks, including 674 killed near GHF sites and 201 killed on routes of other aid convoys. The UN has said its numbers are based on a variety of sources, including hospital records, Gaza families, cemeteries, NGOs, and health officials.
The Health Ministry’s total death toll since October 7, 2023, has reached 58,479, and the number of wounded has climbed to 139,355. Studies have found that the 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.
