On Thursday, Israeli missiles and shells continued to strike various parts of the devastated, starved and besieged Gaza Strip, killing and wounding dozens of Palestinians, including children and women, while the army also killed Yahia Sinwar, the head of the Political Bureau of Hamas movement.
Ten Palestinians, including women and children, were killed and many were injured when the army fired a missile at a home in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp, in central Gaza.
Medical sources reported that Ahmad Tilbani, head of the Medical Services – Emergency Branch in central Gaza, was killed along with his family when a missile struck their home.
In Deir Al-Balah, in central Gaza, at least three Palestinians were killed, and many were injured when an Israeli drone fired a missile at a tent in the southern part of the city. They were identified as Wasim Abdul-Rahman Attar, Mousa Obeid Abu Mandeel and Rafiq Foura.
Furthermore, dozens of casualties were reported when the army fired shells at Abu Hussein Elementary School where families sheltered in the Jabalia refugee camp, in northern Gaza.
The Emergency Department at Kamal Adwan hospital said the Israeli army “committed a massacre in the school, bombing displaced families, and added that fifteen slain Palestinians and dozens of injured, mostly children and women, were moved to the Al-Awda hospital.
In Khan Younis, Israeli missiles killed and injured many Palestinians. An elder, Aref Khalil Al-Qayeq, 81, was killed when an aid package dropped from a plane struck him on the head.
An eyewitness said, instead of dropping aid packages on us from the air, an issue that has already killed and injured many Palestinians, world countries should end this war as the Palestinians are dying in a variety of ways, not only bombing and shelling, but also starvation, thirst and the absence of functioning hospitals and medical centers.
“We were sitting in our tents, children, women and elders, and then the aid planes came and started dropping packages…” he added, “We are all dying, our children are dying… our women, we do not know what to do… we are being killed and the world is silent, watching what is happening…”
In related news, the Israeli army said it killed the political leader of Hamas, Yahia Sinwar, on Wednesday, while the soldiers were looking for tunnels in Rafah, in Gaza’s southmost part.
The army stated that Sinwar was killed when the building he was in collapsed on him after the soldiers bombed it and added that he was also struck with shrapnel from two different munitions: Merkava Mark 4 tank shell and a matador missile.
Israel Ynet News said that Sinwar was killed at around 10 a.m. when the soldiers invaded a building in the Tal Al-Sultan neighborhoods in Rafah, when a soldier of the 450th Battalion noticed what was described as “a suspicious figure” entering and exiting the building, before he alerted his commander.
Ynet added that the army used a drone, identified three figures leaving the building and trying to escape while going through bombarded houses, and that there were two persons, covered in blankets walking ahead of Sinwar, before brigade commander opened fire, before two persons escaped to one building while Sinwar fled to another.
It said that Sinwar went to the second floor of the building before the soldiers fired a tank shell at it, while soldiers of the Infantry Brigade started sweeping the buildings, and added that two grenades were thrown at the soldiers, but only one of them exploded, and that is when the soldiers withdrew and deployed a drone that revealed an injured person sitting in a room with his face covered and trying to down the drone with a stick, and added that the army conducted the second sweep of the building at dawn, identified completed the identification of the corpse in the evening.
Israeli sources said one soldier was seriously injured during the incident that led Sinwar’s killing in Tal Al-Sultan.
The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said last night that almost everyone in Gaza is starving, describing the situation as “inhuman.”
In a post on the X platform, Ghebreyesus explained that recent assessments indicate that nearly everyone in Gaza is starving. He called for immediate humanitarian aid to be delivered to children suffering from severe malnutrition and in urgent need of treatment. Ghebreyesus reiterated his call for a ceasefire, stating that “the best medicine is peace.”
Israel has now killed at least 42,438 Palestinians, including 17,029 children, and 11,585 women, and injured more than 99,246 others, the majority of whom are children and women, in addition to the thousands of missing Palestinians, under the rubble, on destroyed streets and bombarded alleys, across the destroyed coastal enclave, since October 7, 2023.
