Gaza’s Health Ministry said Thursday that Israeli attacks killed 103 Palestinians and wounded 219 over the previous 24-hour period as US-backed Israeli strikes ramped up across the Strip over the past day.
The Health Ministry’s numbers account for dead and wounded Palestinians brought to hospitals and morgues. “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.
Israeli attacks on Thursday included more killings of Palestinians seeking aid. According to Al Jazeera, at least three people were killed while waiting near a distribution site run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in the Netzarim Corridor, which separates northern Gaza from the rest of the Strip.
The Associated Press reported that 18 people were killed by an Israeli airstrike on a crowd of people in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah who were receiving aid from a Palestinian police unit that confiscated goods from gangs that looted aid trucks. The security unit, known as Sahm, is run by the Hamas-led Interior Ministry but includes other factions, including tribal groups.
Witnesses told AP that the Sahm was handing out bags of flour and other goods when the strike hit the crowd. According to hospital officials, the bombing killed at least one child and seven members of the security unit. Israel has backed a gang in southern Gaza that was responsible for significant aid looting last year.
The strike on the security unit came after Israeli officials announced a halt to aid shipments over claims that Hamas was stealing aid, which has been denied by Palestinian clans in Gaza, who say armed men seen on aid trucks were providing security against looting.
Israeli strikes also pounded other targets across the Strip, and photos and videos from Gaza show many children among the dead and wounded.
Medical sources told Al Jazeera that at least 15 people were killed in two separate Israeli attacks on Gaza City, including nine who were killed in the bombing of a school-turned-shelter for displaced Palestinians. In Khan Younis, southern Gaza, at least nine people were killed by strikes on a tent encampment, and five were killed by the bombing of a car.
The Health Ministry said the latest violence has brought the death toll since October 7, 2023, to 56,259 and the number of wounded to 132,458. 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.
