Four Palestinian civilians, including a woman, were killed as a result of a series of air strikes carried out by Israeli warplanes targeting the town of Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, over the past 24 hours, marking a new escalation affecting the eastern areas of the enclave.
Local sources reported that Israeli aircraft launched several successive raids on the town, striking a group of civilians and killing four of them. Meanwhile, civil defence and ambulance crews were unable to reach the targeted area or recover the bodies, due to the continued bombardment and the extreme danger of the field conditions.
In the same context, Israeli forces launched air strikes and artillery shelling at dawn on Friday on the cities of Khan Younis and Rafah, triggering widespread panic among residents, particularly as the attacks were concentrated near densely populated residential areas.
This escalation comes amid Israel’s continued violations of the ceasefire agreement with Gaza since 10 October, during which hundreds of breaches have been recorded, resulting in the killing of hundreds of Palestinians, according to official data from within the Gaza Strip.
The ongoing aerial bombardment of civilian-populated areas raises serious concerns regarding compliance with the rules of international humanitarian law, particularly the principles of distinction and proportionality, which obligate parties to a conflict to distinguish between military objectives and civilians, and to avoid attacks that may cause excessive harm to civilians in relation to the anticipated military advantage.
Furthermore, preventing ambulance and civil defence teams from accessing victims, or exposing them to danger, may constitute a violation of the obligation to protect humanitarian personnel during armed conflicts.
These incidents fall within the broader context of the war launched by the occupation on the Gaza Strip since October 2023, which has continued for nearly two years and has resulted in the killing of more than 70,000 Palestinians and the injury of over 171,000 others, most of them women and children, alongside widespread destruction of infrastructure, homes, and vital facilities.
According to United Nations estimates, the cost of reconstructing what was destroyed by the war has reached approximately $70 billion, while Gaza’s population continues to endure catastrophic humanitarian conditions, exacerbated by ongoing bombardment, restrictions on aid access, and the absence of any genuine guarantees to protect civilians from repeated targeting.
