Key points
- Over 50 Palestinians injured by Israeli strikes: Gaza’s civil defence agency
- A baby and a child have died from starvation in Gaza: Al Jazeera
- Most of Gaza’s population has been displaced at least once during Israel’s war on Gaza
ISLAMABAD: Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed 15 Gazans in the Palestinian territory on Tuesday, as Israel expanded ground offensive to the central city of Deir el-Balah.
AFP cited Gaza’s civil defence agency spokesperson Mahmud Bassal as saying that Israeli strikes on the Al-Shati camp west of Gaza City killed at least 13 Palestinians and injured over 50.
Most of Gaza’s population has been displaced at least once during 21 months of conflict and the Al-Shati camp, on the Mediterranean coast, hosts thousands of people displaced from the north in tents and makeshift shelters.
Raed Bakr, 30, lives with his three children and said he heard “a massive explosion” at about 1:40 am on Tuesday (2240 GMT Monday), which blew their tent away.
“I felt like I was in a nightmare. Fire, dust, smoke, and body parts flying through the air, dirt everywhere. The children were screaming,” AFP cited Bakr, whose wife was killed last year as saying.
“A night of terror”
Muhannad Thabet, 33, who also lives at the Al-Shati camp, called it “a night of terror” due to “non-stop air strikes and explosions,” AFP reported.
He said he carried a six-year-old child to get treatment and said the nearby Shifa hospital — once one of Gaza’s largest — was overwhelmed with wounded people.
Starvation in Gaza
Al Jazeera reported that a baby and a child have died from starvation in Gaza, as Israel’s blockade of the Strip plunges it into an increasingly dire malnutrition crisis.
Israeli forces killed more than 60 Palestinians, including 11 aid seekers, in attacks across Gaza on Monday, as tanks pushed into southern and eastern districts of Deir el-Balah for the first time.
According to AFP, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that between 50,000 and 80,000 people were living in the area, which until now had been considered relatively safe.
Some 30,000 were living in displacement sites.
OCHA said nearly 88 per cent of the entire Gaza Strip was now either under evacuation orders or within Israeli militarised zones, forcing the population of 2.4 million into an ever-shrinking space.
