The death toll in Gaza rose to 37 since dawn today, following continuous air strikes by Israeli occupation forces on various parts of the Strip, reflecting an entrenched pattern of indiscriminate and systematic targeting of civilians. This ongoing assault, now in its ninth month, has become a campaign of collective extermination.
Today’s airstrikes struck crowded areas filled with displaced persons and civilians, resulting in dozens of deaths and injuries, most of them women and children, once again underscoring that the occupying power is relentlessly pursuing a policy aimed at the wholesale destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza.
In a horrific massacre southwest of Khan Younis, 20 civilians were killed while waiting for humanitarian aid on Al-Tina Street, in an attack that embodies a policy of collective punishment, targeting the hungry and destitute.
In another attack, a young man from Maghazi camp was killed when an Israeli strike hit a café on the beach at Al-Zawaida, a location sheltering thousands of displaced persons.
Four more people, including three children, were killed when a tent sheltering displaced families near Al-Rabee Hall in Nuseirat camp was bombed. Later strikes on Al-Safa tower in the same camp caused additional casualties.
In Gaza City, a strike on the Hattab family home in Al-Sabra neighbourhood killed at least two people. A similar scene unfolded in Khan Younis, where strikes targeted tents sheltering displaced people behind Al-Attar station, killing two.
A six-year-old child was killed near Tabariya station in Al-Mawasi, when tents housing displaced families from destroyed areas were bombed.
The occupation forces continue a systematic campaign of destruction of residential neighbourhoods, with reports today of homes being demolished in the Al-Zaytoun district, south-east of Gaza City, and thick smoke rising across the city skyline.
These are not “accidental violations” or “errors in targeting”; rather, they represent a deliberate, ongoing policy of systematic mass killing, executed in full view of the world and amid deafening international silence. This flagrantly violates the core principles of international humanitarian law, particularly the duty to distinguish between civilians and combatants, the prohibition of collective punishment, and the criminalisation of attacks on shelters and humanitarian facilities.
Since the beginning of the assault on 7 October 2023, the occupation’s objective has not been confined to attacking what it claims are “resistance infrastructures”, but has extended to the wholesale destruction of civilian life in Gaza — homes, hospitals, schools, shelters, food markets, and even aid queues have all been targeted.
According to field data, over 197,000 Palestinians have been killed or injured to date, the vast majority women and children, with more than 11,000 missing, presumed trapped under rubble or in besieged areas. Hundreds of thousands of families remain permanently displaced, without shelter or food, facing a deepening famine that has already claimed the lives of dozens of children and left thousands severely malnourished, famine itself used as another weapon in this campaign of extermination.
The continuation of this pattern of mass killing represents a profound legal and moral stain on the conscience of the world, threatening to render international humanitarian law meaningless in the face of weapons that neither recognise childhood nor humanity, and which show no regard for court rulings or appeals to conscience.
