Israeli strikes kill 16 in Gaza
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 16 people on Friday across the Palestinian territory, where Israel has ramped up its military offensive in recent days.
The toll from ‘Israeli strikes in various areas across the Gaza Strip since midnight’ totalled 16 dead, agency official Mohammed al-Mughayyir said.
He said there were also dozens of people wounded in the attacks, which mainly hit the centre and south of the territory.
In Gaza’s north, Al-Awda hospital reported Friday that three of its staff were injured ‘after Israeli quadcopter drones dropped bombs’ on the facility.
The Israeli army said that over the past day, its forces had attacked ‘military compounds, weapons storage facilities and sniper posts’ in Gaza.
‘In addition, the air force struck over 75 terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip,’ it added.
Aid began trickling into the Gaza Strip on Monday for the first time in more than two months, amid mounting condemnation of an Israeli blockade that has sparked severe shortages of food and medicine.
COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that oversees civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, said that on Thursday 107 humanitarian aid trucks entered Gaza.
The UN’s World Food Programme said the following day that 15 of its trucks ‘were looted late last night in southern Gaza, while en route to WFP-supported bakeries’.
WFP executive director Cindy McCain had previously said some aid was finally reaching Gazans, ‘but it’s moving far too slowly’.
Israel resumed major operations in Gaza on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire.
On Friday, Gaza’s health ministry said at least 3,673 people had been killed in the territory since then, taking the war’s overall toll to 53,822, mostly civilians.
Hamas’s October 2023 attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Militants also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Meanwhile, United Nations chief Antonio Guterres on Friday said ‘Palestinians in Gaza are enduring what may be the cruelest phase of this cruel conflict’ as Israel ramps up its military offensive.
‘For nearly 80 days, Israel blocked the entry of life-saving international aid,’ he said in a statement. ‘The entire population of Gaza is facing the risk of famine.
‘The Israeli military offensive is intensifying with atrocious levels of death and destruction.
‘Today, 80 per cent of Gaza has been either designated an Israeli-militarised zone or an area where people have been ordered to leave.’
Israel resumed major operations in Gaza on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire.
Aid also began trickling into the Gaza Strip on Monday for the first time in more than two months, amid condemnation of the Israeli blockade that sparked severe shortages of food and medicine.
‘Israel has clear obligations under international humanitarian law,’ Guterres said. ‘As the occupying power, it must agree to allow and facilitate the aid that is needed.’
