Israeli strikes overnight and into yesterday killed more than 90 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip, including dozens of women and children, health officials said.
One strike in the northern Shati refugee camp killed a 68-year-old Hamas member of the Palestinian legislature, as well as a man, a woman and their six children who were sheltering in the same building, according to officials from Al-Shifa Hospital, where the casualties were taken.
One of the deadliest strikes hit a house in Gaza City’s Tel Al-Hawa district on Monday evening and killed 19 members of the family living inside, according to Al-Shifa Hospital. The dead included eight women and six children.
A strike on a tent housing displaced people in the same district killed a man, a woman and their two children.
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There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strikes.
Gaza’s health ministry said in a daily report yesterday afternoon that the bodies of 93 people killed by Israeli strikes had been brought to hospitals in Gaza over the last 24 hours, along with 278 wounded.
It did not specify the total number of women and children among the dead.
The Hamas politician killed in a strike early yesterday, Mohammed Faraj Al-Ghoul, was a member of the bloc of representatives from the group that won seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council in the last election held among Palestinians, in 2006.
The Israeli military says it only targets militants and tries to avoid harming civilians. It blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in densely populated areas. But daily, it hits homes and shelters where people are living without warning or explanation of the target.
The latest attacks came after US president Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu held two days of talks last week that ended with no sign of a breakthrough in negotiations over a ceasefire and hostage release.
The UN rights office said yesterday it had recorded at least 875 killings within the last six weeks at aid points in Gaza run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and convoys run by other relief groups, including the United Nations.
The majority of those killed were in the vicinity of GHF sites, while the remaining 201 were killed on the routes of other aid convoys.
The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to get supplies into Gaza, largely bypassing a UN-led system that Israel alleges has let Hamas militants loot aid shipments intended for civilians. Hamas denies the allegation.
The GHF, which began distributing food packages in Gaza in late May after Israel lifted an 11-week aid blockade, previously told Reuters that such incidents have not happened on its sites and accused the UN of misinformation, which it denies.
The GHF did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest UN figures.
“The data we have is based on our own information gathering through various reliable sources, including medical human rights and humanitarian organisations,” Thameen Al-Kheetan, a spokesperson for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters in Geneva.
The UN has called the GHF aid model “inherently unsafe” and a violation of humanitarian impartiality standards.
The GHF said on Friday it had delivered more than 70 million meals to Gaza Palestinians in five weeks, and that other humanitarian groups had “nearly all of their aid looted” by Hamas or criminal gangs.
Heavy Israeli airstrikes killed 12 people, including five Hezbollah fighters, in eastern Lebanon yesterday, a security source in Lebanon said, in what Israel said was a warning to the Iran-backed group against trying to re-establish itself.
The Israeli military said the airstrikes targeted training camps used by elite Hezbollah fighters and warehouses it used to store weapons in the Bekaa Valley region.
The airstrikes were the deadliest on the area since a US-brokered ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel last November.
Bachir Khodr, governor of the Bekaa region, said seven of the dead were Syrian nationals.
Meanwhile, an Israeli ultra-Orthodox party that has been a key governing partner of Mr Netanyahu said early yesterday it was leaving the coalition government, threatening to destabilise the Israeli leader’s rule at a pivotal time in the war in Gaza.
United Torah Judaism’s two factions said they were leaving the government over disagreements surrounding a bill that would codify broad military draft exemptions for their constituents, many of whom study Jewish texts instead of enlisting in the military.
The departure of a party that has long served as a kingmaker in Israeli politics does not immediately threaten Mr Netanyahu’s rule.
But, once it comes into effect within 48 hours, it will leave the Israeli leader with a slim majority in a government that could now more heavily rely on the whims of two far-right parties.
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Source MSN
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