Twenty-three Palestinians, including nine civilians waiting for aid, were killed and dozens more injured since Thursday morning in a series of attacks by Israeli occupation forces across various areas of the Gaza Strip. These assaults form part of an ongoing campaign of genocide that has persisted for nearly 22 months.
Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians in multiple locations, in blatant violation of basic principles of international humanitarian law, which prohibit attacks on non-combatants, particularly those awaiting humanitarian assistance or sheltering in areas designated as safe zones.
The most recent attacks revealed a recurring pattern of strikes against civilians. Nine Palestinians, including a woman, were killed and dozens injured by artillery shelling while they waited for aid near the Zikim area in the northwest of the Strip.
Four more Palestinians, including a woman, were killed in a helicopter attack that struck a displacement tent in Gaza City. Artillery shelling on the Qastal Towers east of Deir al-Balah resulted in the deaths of three others.
In Al-Bureij refugee camp, a woman was killed in an airstrike on a residential flat, while three others were killed in a separate strike on an apartment in Al-Salahi Tower in Nuseirat Camp. Another person died following an attack on a house in Al-Bureij.
In the south of Gaza, two Palestinians were killed in a strike targeting a tent west of Khan Younis.
These attacks represent a continuation of Israel’s systematic policy, adopted since 7 October 2023, of large-scale and deliberate targeting of civilians, through mass killings, starvation, widespread destruction, and forced displacement. These actions meet the legal definition of genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention.
This genocide, enabled by political and military support from the United States, has resulted in over 202,000 Palestinians killed or wounded, the majority being women and children. More than 9,000 people remain missing, many of them believed to be buried under rubble. Hundreds of thousands have been forcibly displaced, and famine has claimed the lives of dozens, including large numbers of children.
Despite repeated international calls and binding rulings from the International Court of Justice demanding an end to acts that may constitute genocide, Israel continues its campaign of mass killing with total impunity, amid deafening international silence that amounts to indirect complicity in these crimes.
