Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Children are among the victims of Israeli attacks in besieged northern and central Gaza as humanitarian aid remains restricted.
Israel has carried out a series of attacks in northern and central Gaza that killed at least 25 people, including children, as a rights group accused that of committing “acts of genocide” by denying clean water to the Palestinians.
Separate Israeli attacks in Jabalia, northern Gaza, where Palestinians have been under a heavy siege for more than two months, killed at least 16 people, including 10 members of the same family, on Thursday.
In Gaza City, an Israeli attack on a house in the Daraj neighborhood killed at least four Palestinians, and another person was killed in an attack on a group of civilians in the Zeitoun neighborhood.
In central Gaza, an attack on the Maghazi refugee camp killed at least four people. The Israeli military also issued threats of forced evacuation to residents of the Bureij refugee camp in the same region.
“The question is where can people go, because everywhere there is overcrowding in the central areas of the strip,” Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said, reporting from nearby Deir el-Balah.
At least 45,000 Palestinians have been killed and 107,000 others injured in more than 14 months of attacks in Gaza, a densely populated territory at risk of starvation that is experiencing emergency levels of famine.
Israel began its fierce military campaign after at least 1,139 people were killed during an attack led by the Palestinian group Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, with more than 200 others taken.
Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced, many of them multiple times, while Israel’s intense bombardment has left much of the territory in ruins.
Referring to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report on Thursday that accused Israel of using water as a weapon of war in Gaza, Abu Azzoum said that searching for water in the besieged and bombed territory was “a daily struggle for survival “.
In its 179-page report, HRW detailed how Israeli authorities have cut off and subsequently restricted piped water to Gaza, disabled most of its water and sanitation infrastructure by cutting electricity and restricting fuel, have deliberately destroyed and damaged water and sanitation infrastructure and water repair. materials; and blocked the entry of critical water supplies.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry denied the allegations, which it called “lies,” and alleged that the organization promotes “anti-Israeli propaganda.”
A separate report by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) released on Thursday found “clear signs of ethnic cleansing” in Gaza, particularly in the northern part of the strip.
“Our first-hand observations of the medical and humanitarian catastrophe inflicted on Gaza are consistent with the descriptions provided by a growing number of legal experts and organizations that conclude that a genocide is taking place in Gaza,” the organization said .
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has done so repeatedly ordered Israel to take all necessary measures to ensure that water and basic food supplies reach the Palestinian population of Gaza without delay.
Despite this, Israel was still being accused by the United Nations and humanitarian organizations of restricting the supply of aid to Gaza by effectively blocking access to the enclave.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Thursday that Israeli authorities had “once again” denied access to Beit Hanoon, Beit Lahiya and eastern Jabalia, which are under heavy siege.
“We underlined how the vast majority of our efforts to reach the northern Gaza governorates since the Israeli siege began 10 weeks ago have been blocked. Most requests are refused outright,” Dujarric said.
The UN said it had planned 96 humanitarian actions in northern Gaza, but only 16 of them were facilitated by Israeli authorities.
