In a scene that reflects the ongoing tragedy in the Gaza Strip, at least 73 Palestinians, including women and children, and 33 people waiting for relief aid, were killed within hours of the continuous bombardment carried out by the Israeli occupation forces on various areas of the Strip since dawn on Thursday.
According to medical sources and eyewitnesses, the airstrikes targeted homes, tents, and civilian gatherings in the northern, central, and southern parts of the Gaza Strip, including schools housing displaced people and gatherings waiting for food aid, resulting in a large number of deaths and injuries and the outbreak of massive fires.
In central Gaza City, 12 Palestinians, most of them children and women, were killed in an airstrike targeting the Mustafa Hafez School, which was sheltering displaced people. A medical source at Al-Shifa Hospital stated that the bodies of the dead arrived charred from the fire that consumed large parts of the school.
In the al-Tuffah neighborhood, east of the city, warplanes launched two airstrikes on Fahd al-Sabah School after a warning to evacuate it, completely destroying it, according to witness accounts.
Less than an hour later, Israeli shells caused a new massacre, killing 24 civilians waiting for aid in shelling that targeted crowds east of al-Nabulsi Roundabout and near the Netzarim axis south of Gaza City. The attack was described by medical staff as “a new massacre against the hungry and defenseless.”
In the southern Gaza Strip, medical sources reported the arrival of 26 dead to Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, including seven civilians killed while waiting for aid in the al-Tahlia area. Aircraft also bombed tents housing displaced people in the al-Mawasi area, sparking fires that devastated several temporary shelters.
These crimes are part of an escalating pattern of deliberate targeting of civilians, particularly those queuing for aid, despite the perpetrators’ prior knowledge of the nature of these crowds.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza had previously announced that the death toll at aid distribution centers since the US-Israeli mechanism began operating on May 27 had exceeded 640, with nearly 4,500 injured. This raises serious questions about the extent to which the occupation is deliberately using hunger as a tool of war, as part of a systematic campaign to starve and besiege the population to death.
This behavior is viewed as one of the elements of the crime of genocide, which is not limited to direct killing but also includes policies of starvation, forced displacement, and the destruction of the necessities of life.
In a previous toll on Wednesday, the occupation killed another 116 Palestinians, including 27 starved people, as a result of airstrikes on civilian gatherings and shelters. The Government Media Office also documented the Israeli army’s execution of 26 “bloody massacres” in just 48 hours, leaving more than 300 dead and hundreds wounded and missing, all of them civilians.
Since October 7, 2023, the IOF has been waging a comprehensive war against the population of the Gaza Strip. This war falls within the legal category of genocide, as it includes killing, starvation, the systematic destruction of residential neighborhoods, and the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians, in complete disregard of the orders of the International Court of Justice and repeated international calls to halt the war.
To date, this war has resulted in the killing and wounding of more than 191,000 Palestinians, most of them children and women, with more than 11,000 missing. This war is taking place amid deteriorating humanitarian and health conditions, severe shortages of food, water, and medicine, and a rapidly worsening famine.
Despite the escalating crimes and violations, the Israeli war machine continues to operate without accountability, amid American political and military support and unjustified international silence. Meanwhile, Palestinians in Gaza live under the fire of a war that is deliberately depriving them of even the right to life or access to food and shelter.
As the death toll increases day after day, human rights concerns are growing over the occupation’s continued use of genocidal tactics and its violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, which prohibits the targeting of civilians and the use of blockades as a weapon against peoples, and guarantees the right to food, dignity, and survival.
