On Wednesday, 48 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip, including 23 in attacks carried out by the Israeli occupation forces, and 25 others who died when a lorry carrying food aid overturned onto dozens of civilians amidst catastrophic humanitarian and environmental conditions.
Medical sources and eyewitnesses reported that Israeli forces carried out aerial and artillery bombardments across various parts of the Strip, targeting residential homes, tents sheltering displaced persons, and crowds waiting for aid.
In Rafah, southern Gaza, occupation forces opened fire on Palestinians waiting to receive food aid, killing six. In a separate incident, six-month-old infant Habiba Ma’rouf was shot and killed by a drone while inside her family’s tent on Al-Nafaq Street in Gaza City.
In two separate airstrikes on the Shuja’iyya and Zeitoun neighbourhoods in eastern Gaza City, eight Palestinians were killed, including children. An attack on Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza killed five members of one family, a father, mother, and their three children, and injured more than twenty others, most of whom were children.
Separately, 25 civilians died when a lorry loaded with food aid overturned in central Gaza.
The Gaza Government Media Office stated that the incident occurred amid chaos deliberately manufactured by occupation policies, noting that the lorry had been forced to take unsafe routes that had previously been targeted by airstrikes, leading to it overturning on top of dozens of starving civilians.
The office further explained that the occupation authorities are deliberately placing civilians in danger by forcing aid deliveries to pass through perilous routes without any protective measures or proper organisation of distribution. This has led, over recent months, to the deaths and injuries of hundreds of people attempting to access food.
Although the occupation has allowed a limited number of humanitarian aid lorries into Gaza since 27 August, the quantity remains grossly insufficient compared to the Strip’s minimum daily requirement of over 600 lorries to meet basic needs.
The Israeli occupation continues to enforce a policy of starvation as part of its military operations by tightening the blockade and preventing the flow of food and medicine; a clear violation of international humanitarian law, which prohibits the use of starvation as a weapon against civilians.
These events are part of the ongoing war on the Gaza Strip that began on 7 October 2023, which has resulted in over 211,000 people killed or injured, the majority of them women and children, in addition to over 9,000 missing and hundreds of thousands displaced. The war has also led to a worsening famine that has claimed the lives of dozens of children and patients.
Despite repeated international warnings, killings, starvation, and systematic destruction continue unabated, in what constitutes a grave breach of international law, amid the absence of any effective action to stop these crimes or hold those responsible accountable.
