GAZA: The health ministry in Gaza on Tuesday said that at least 37,164 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in the territory during more than eight months of Israeli bombardment and ground offensive in the besieged Palestinian territory.
According to the health ministry statement, the toll includes at least 40 deaths over the past 24 hours, adding that 84,832 people have been injured in the Gaza Strip since October 7 last year.
The latest casualties stem from Israeli airstrikes targeting civilian areas, with reports emerging of a home in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood being bombed, resulting in at least one fatality and several injuries. Rescue efforts are underway amidst the rubble, with fears of additional victims trapped under the debris.
Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes have decimated homes and neighborhoods throughout Gaza, killing innocent civilians and leaving countless others injured and traumatized.
A number of civilians were killed and others were injured tonight and at dawn today in Israeli airstrikes targeting the Nuseirat refugee camp, the report added.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that a response was still awaited from Palestinian resistance group Hamas on a Gaza ceasefire proposal, to which he said Israel had reaffirmed its commitment.
“It is a hopeful sign, just as the statement issued after the president (Joe Biden) made his proposal 10 days ago was hopeful,” AFP quotes Blinken as saying.
“But it is not dispositive. What is dispositive — or at least what so far been dispositive in one way or another — is the word coming from Gaza and from the Hamas leadership in Gaza. And that is what counts. And that is what we do not have. “We await the answer from Hamas,” he said.
Israel too has yet to formally announce it has accepted the ceasefire proposal, which was revealed by Biden on May 31.
