GAZA CITY, Palestine: Gaza’s civil defence agency said Thursday that Israeli bombardment killed at least 29 people since midnight in the Palestinian territory, which has been under Israeli aid blockade for nearly two months.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that while the military’s mission was to bring home all the hostages from Gaza, its “supreme goal” was to achieve victory against Hamas.
Israel resumed its campaign in the Gaza Strip on March 18, after a two-month truce collapsed over disagreements between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas.
Civil defence official Mohammed al-Mughayyir said Thursday’s toll included eight people killed in an air strike on the Abu Sahlul family home in Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza.
Four people were killed in an air strike east of Shaaf in Gaza City’s Al-Tuffah neighbourhood, he said as cited by AFP.
At least 17 more were killed in other attacks across the Palestinian territory, including one that hit a tent sheltering displaced people near the central city of Deir el-Balah, the agency said.
“We came here and found all these houses destroyed, and children, women and young people all bombed to pieces,” said Ahmed Abu Zarqa after a deadly strike in Khan Younis.
“This is no way to live. Enough, we’re tired, enough!
“We don’t know what to do with our lives any more. We’d rather die than live this kind of life.”
At Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, rescuers rushed a screaming wounded child out of an ambulance.
The health ministry in Gaza said on Thursday that at least 2,326 people have been killed since Israel resumed strikes, bringing the overall death toll to 52,418 since Israel launched the bombardment campaign on October 7, 2023, in response to Hamas’s attack on Israel.
The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, according to Israeli official figures.
Hamas fighters also held 251 hostages, 58 of whom are still being held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel says its renewed military campaign aims to force Hamas to free the remaining captives.
“We want to bring home both the living and the fallen — this is a very important mission,” Netanyahu said at a function in Jerusalem.
“But in war there is one supreme goal — and that is victory over our enemies, and we will achieve it.”
Days before resuming its military campaign, Israel blocked all aid entering Gaza, and UN rights chief Volker Turk said the territory was witnessing a “humanitarian catastrophe”.
“Israel appears to be inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life increasingly incompatible with their continued existence as a group in Gaza,” he said this week. – Agencies
