Israeli Airstrikes, Shootings Kill 94 Palestinians In Gaza

Tel Aviv: Israeli airstrikes and shootings killed 94 Palestinians in Gaza late Wednesday and Thursday, including 45 who were attempting to get much-needed humanitarian aid, hospitals and the Health Ministry said Thursday. Families wept over the bodies from a strike that hit a tent camp during the night as displaced people slept in southern Gaza. At least 13 members of a single family were killed, including at least six children under 12.

“My children, my children … my beloved,” wailed Intisar Abu Assi, sobbing over the bodies of her son and daughters and their young children. Another woman kissed the forehead of a dead little girl wrapped in a blanket on the floor of the morgue at Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis. In central Gaza, a boy stroked the face of his dead sister, 6-year-old Heba Abu Etiwi, in a morgue at Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital. The girl and another of her brothers were among eight people killed when a strike Wednesday evening hit near a stand selling



falafel.

A separate strike on a school in Gaza City sheltering displaced people also killed 15 people. The toll from strikes emerged as more Palestinians were killed in near-daily shootings while trying to obtain aid. Five were killed on the roads leading to food-distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the newly created, secretive American organization backed by Israel to feed the Gaza Strip’s population. 

Another 40 were killed while waiting for trucks carrying U.N. aid in several locations around Gaza, according to hospital officials.

The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostages. The war has left the coastal Palestinian territory in ruins, with much of the urban landscape flattened in the fighting. More than 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million population has been displaced, often multiple times.