Gaza: 153 killed, 60 injured by Israeli bombing last 24 hrs
At least 153 Palestinians were killed and 60 others injured in Israeli indiscriminate attacks in Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours according to the Gaza Health Ministry. This brings the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli bombings to 33,360, including 14,520 children and 9,560 women and 75,993 injured since last October, the Health Ministry in the besieged enclave said on Tuesday. Further 12,000 Palestinians are reported missing, presumed dead under the rubble.
These figures do not include bodies of Palestinians being recovered after Israeli Defence Forces leave areas it occupies in Gaza Strip.
For example 409 Palestinian bodies were recovered—some of them decomposed— by civil defense teams from the Al-Shifa Medical Complex and its surroundings in Gaza City, as well as in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip, in the aftermath of the withdrawal of the Israeli occupation forces from both areas. The Israeli army withdrew from Al-Shifa Hospital on April 1 following a two-week raid and from Khan Younis on April 7, leaving behind a massive trail of destruction.
Palestinian Civil Defense Agency reported that the recovery efforts are ongoing at the moment to retrieve the bodies of potential victims in both areas, where Israeli troops pulled out in recent days after several weeks of deadly ground attacks.
They urged the international community to provide and introduce specialized equipment and machinery to assist in retrieving the bodies of victims from under the rubble of destroyed homes.
In Khan Yunis, Palestinian civilians and paramedics recovered around 84 Palestinian bodies, most of them decomposed, in the aftermath of the Israeli army pullout of the city. Some of the bodies were transferred to Abu Yousef Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, while others were buried by the citizens themselves.
This comes in light of the large number of reports received by the teams from local families about the disappearance of their sons during the presence of the occupation forces, with dozens of bodies still buried under the rubble.
Meanwhile two Palestinians were killed this afternoon in two separate Israeli strikes in the central and southern Gaza Strip, according to local sources, reported Wafa News Agency.
In Rafah , southern Gaza, Israeli forces targeted an agricultural land in the Al-Zuhur neighborhood, north of the city, resulting in the killing of one civilian and injuries to two others.
Additionally, a young man was fatally shot by an Israeli sniper near the Shuhada Junction in central Gaza.
Over the last few hours, a barrage of Israeli airstrikes targeted several areas across the Gaza Strip, resulting in multiple civilians killed and many others injured, according to local and medical sources.
WAFA correspondent reported that Israeli warplanes targeted two houses in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City. The attack led to the killing of two civilians and the injury of dozens. Simultaneously, Israeli artillery shelled the neighborhoods Shejaiya, Sabra, Tal Al-Hawa, and Sheikh Ajleen in the city.
In another attack, a civilian was killed and several others were injured in an Israeli airstrike targeting a group of civilians on Salah al-Din Road, southeast of Gaza City. The injured were transported to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital for treatment.
Israeli warplanes also bombed a house in the northern Gaza Strip, alongside artillery shelling on various areas.
In the central Gaza Strip, two civilians were killed and others were injured as the occupation artillery targeted the surroundings of a school sheltering displaced people in Deir al-Balah.
Elsewhere Israeli air force bombed a residential tower in the town of Al-Zahraa, in central Gaza. The aftermath of the attack is yet to be determined.
In the south, two civilians were killed and others were injured as a result of an Israeli shelling targeting a house in the Al-Tanour neighborhood, east of Rafah city.
At the same time, Israeli warships fired two shells and opened heavy machine gun fire towards the coast of Rafah city.
Meanwhile, Israel has claimed 419 trucks – the highest since the war on the besieged coastal enclave began – entered on Monday, but the Red Crescent and United Nations gave much lower figures, with the latter saying many vehicles were only half full because of Israeli inspection rules, reports Al Jazeera.
Red Crescent officials in Egypt said 350 trucks had crossed from there into Gaza on Monday while UNRWA said 223 trucks had entered, fewer than half the 500 trucks it says are required daily.
UN agency OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke also pointed to severe restrictions on delivery of aid inside Gaza itself last month saying Israel had denied permission for half the convoys it tried sending to the north in March, with UN aid convoys three times more likely to be refused than any other.
Israel said it would open the closed Beit Hanoon (Erez) crossing point into northern Gaza from Israel for aid supplies, but none of the trucks that entered on Monday went through that.
UN food deliveries in Gaza are “much more likely to be impeded or denied” compared to other humanitarian aid, and aid for northern Gaza is three times more likely to be denied, said the UN humanitarian office on Tuesday, reports Anadolu Agency.
“The statistics tell us that UN uncoordinated food deliveries are much more likely to be impeded or denied access to areas requiring coordination within Gaza than any other humanitarian issue,” Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) , told a briefing in Geneva.
“Food convoys that should be going particularly to the north, where 70% of people face famine conditions, are three times more likely to be denied than any other humanitarian combined with other kinds of material,” he explained.
Food aid distribution inside Gaza is a “major issue” due to well-known security problems with the breakdown of law and order, he said. However, he continued, there is an obligation of the belligerents, and in particular Israel as the power occupying Gaza, to facilitate and ensure humanitarian access does not stop at the border.
“Half of the convoys we were trying to send to the north with food were denied by the same Israeli authorities,” he added.
Laerke also stressed that Israeli authorities fail to give any justification for blocking the food aid, saying that when they “say no, it ends there.”
“We don’t get an explanation,” he added.
According to Israeli government 1,139 Israelis were killed by Hamas on 7 October in southern Israel and 134 Israelis and foreign nationals are still detained by Hamas in Gaza.
[Photo: Member of the al-Ashal family, wounded by Israeli attacks treated at al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on 09 04 2024.
Photojournalist: Ashraf Amra /AA]
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