Israeli occupation forces continue their campaign of annihilation in the Gaza Strip, amid a deafening silence from the international community.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, 19 Palestinian civilians were killed in a series of intense Israeli airstrikes across several areas of Gaza, marking yet another escalation targeting residential neighbourhoods and defenceless civilians.
Twelve people were killed in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp following the bombardment of three homes. Among the victims were six members of the Abu Jreiban family and three from the Hamdan family. A third family, consisting of a father, mother, and their child, was also killed in the Al-Sawarha area.
In northern Gaza, three civilians, including two young girls, were killed when a home in Jabalia town was struck. Meanwhile, a Palestinian fisherman was shot dead by Israeli naval forces while working off the Gaza coast—an act that starkly violates the principle of civilian protection during armed conflict.
In the south-east of the Strip, one person was killed in Bani Suhaila near Khan Younis when a home sheltering displaced people was bombed. Another man with a disability was killed when his home was targeted in the Al-Zeitoun district of southern Gaza City. Separately, a wounded civilian succumbed to previous injuries sustained in Al-Bureij refugee camp.
The ongoing bombardment of residential areas, and the deliberate targeting of children, displaced civilians, and persons with disabilities, cannot be dismissed as isolated violations of international law. Rather, they reflect a deliberate and systematic pattern of acts that meet the legal threshold for genocide. The repeated destruction of homes with families still inside, and the intentional killing of unarmed civilians, are grave breaches of humanitarian law, signalling a policy of calculated erasure of an entire civilian population.
What is unfolding in Gaza surpasses the limits of what can be called a “violation”—it is a crime of massive scale, carried out under military cover and with disgraceful international indifference. Immediate action is needed to halt these atrocities and ensure that those responsible are held to account without delay before competent international courts.
