AT least nine people were killed in an Israeli attack on Gaza’s Bureij refugee camp yesterday morning, including five children who were playing in the street when the bombs struck.
The attack targeted a gathering of civilians near the Abu Rasas roundabout in the camp.
The dead and injured children were taken to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah.
Earlier, the Israeli army attacked a family home in the central Gaza refugee camp of Nuseirat, killing 17 members of the Freih family, including 14 women and children.
The Health Ministry in Gaza said that the Israeli occupation army committed three massacres in different areas of the Gaza Strip over the previous 24 hours, killing at least 50 civilians and injuring 150 others.
In its daily update, the ministry said: ‘A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads as ambulance and civil defence crews have been prevented by Israeli occupation forces from approaching them.’
Director of Gaza’s health ministry Munir al-Barsh said that all the hospitals’ health services in northern Gaza have been suspended as a result of the acute fuel crisis.
‘The only source of fuel is the World Health Organisation, which supplies them (hospitals) with very small quantities,’ Barsh told the press.
‘There are 25,000 patients in urgent need of treatment outside the Gaza Strip, and only 5,000 others have already been able to leave.
‘For two months or more, no food supplies have entered the Gaza Strip – which entails the need to open the Rafah crossing immediately to alleviate the difficult conditions we are facing,’ al-Barsh said, adding that 34 children have died in northern Gaza due to acute food shortages.
He also said that Israeli tanks were deployed outside the Patients’ Friends Charity Hospital in northern Gaza, and the citizens in ash-Shuja’iya neighbourhood and nearby areas do not know where to go because of the intensity of the Israeli bombardments.
Gaza’s health ministry warned anew that the shutdown of hospitals’ power generators as a result of the ongoing fuel crisis in the Gaza Strip will lead to the death of patients with critical conditions and premature babies, especially at the Nasser Hospital.
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini and the Jordanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ayman Safadi held a joint news conference in the Jordanian capital Amman yesterday.
Lazzarini said: ‘At least 10 children lose a limb every day in Gaza due to the continuing aggression. Nearly 17,000 children are no longer accompanied by their families. What is happening in Gaza is a flagrant violation of international law and must be investigated.’
• At least 9,250 Israeli soldiers have been wounded since October 7th, Israel’s Ministry of Defence said yesterday. Half of them are under the age of 30 and 70 per cent are reservists. It also said about 37 per cent, or at least 3,600, are dealing with mental health issues.
