GAZA: Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 15 people on Saturday across the Palestinian territory, where Israel has ramped up its military offensive in recent days. Civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that the dead included a couple who were killed with their two young children in a pre-dawn strike on a house in the Amal quarter of the southern city of Khan Yunis. To the west of the city, at least five people were killed by a drone strike on a crowd of people that had gathered to wait for aid trucks, he said.
At Khan Yunis's Nasser Hospital, tearful mourners gathered around white-shrouded bodies outside. "Suddenly, a missile from an F-16 destroyed the entire house and all of them were civilians — my sister, her husband and their children," said Wissam al Madhoun. "We found them lying in the street. What did this child do to (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu?" The Israeli military said it was unable to comment on individual strikes without their "precise geographical coordinates".
In a statement, the military said that over the past day the air force had struck more than 100 targets across the territory. Israel resumed operations in Gaza on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire. Gaza's health ministry said on Saturday that at least 3,747 people had been killed in the territory since then, taking the war's overall toll to 53,901, mostly civilians.
The Gaza City municipality, meanwhile, warned on Saturday of "a potential large-scale water crisis" due to a lack of supplies needed for urgent repairs. It said damage from the war had "affected the majority of Gaza's water infrastructure, leaving large portions of the population vulnerable to severe water shortages". It added that temperatures were rising and demand was expected to increase.
Aid shipments to the Gaza Strip restarted on Monday for the first time since March 2, amidst mounting condemnation of the Israeli blockade, which has resulted in severe shortages of food and medicine. "I appeal to people of conscience to send us fresh water and food," said Sobhi Ghattas, a displaced Palestinian sheltering at the port in Gaza City. "My daughter has been asking for bread since this morning and we have none to give her."
COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that oversees civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said that 107 humanitarian aid trucks entered Gaza on Thursday. But Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said on Friday that the UN had brought in 500 to 600 per day on average during a six-week ceasefire that broke down in March. "No one should be surprised let alone shocked at scenes of precious aid looted, stolen or 'lost'," he said on X, adding that "the people of Gaza have been starved" for more than 11 weeks.
The Israeli military said that over the past day, its forces had attacked "military compounds, weapons storage facilities and sniper posts" in Gaza. The military said that air raid sirens were activated in communities near Gaza, later reporting that "a projectile that crossed into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip was intercepted" by the air force. In Gaza's north, Al Awda hospital reported on Friday that three of its staff were injured "after Israeli quad-copter drones dropped bombs" on the facility. The civil defence agency later said it had successfully contained a fire at the hospital. — AFP
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