ISRAELI warplanes carried out renewed attacks across the Gaza Strip yesterday, killing at least 26 Palestinians in a series of airstrikes, including an entire family of 13.
The strikes form part of Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian population, targeting civilian homes, displacement camps, and what it falsely designates as combat zones.
In Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis, 13 members of the Baraka family were killed when their house was obliterated by Israeli bombs.
Most of the victims were children. Gaza’s civil defence agency confirmed that emergency crews recovered their bodies, alongside a number of injured residents, from the Baraka home and adjacent houses that were also hit in the strike.
Elsewhere in the besieged enclave, Israeli aircraft bombed the Nasibu family home in Tal al-Zaatar, northern Gaza, killing 11 people, including women and children.
Another strike on the Abu Akr family house in western Khan Younis claimed the lives of a father and his son.
These attacks followed an earlier onslaught on Thursday, in which at least 40 Palestinians were killed in Israeli raids, many of them in tent encampments set up for displaced civilians.
One of the deadliest strikes targeted al-Mawasi, a coastal zone near Khan Younis that had been designated a ‘safe’ area.
‘We were sitting peacefully in the tent, under God’s protection, when we suddenly saw something red glowing – and then the tent exploded, and the surrounding tents caught fire,’ said Israa Abu al-Rus, a survivor of the al-Mawasi massacre.
‘This is supposed to be a safe area in al-Mawasi, and the place just exploded. We fled the tent towards the sea and saw the tents burning.’
According to UNICEF chief Catherine Russell, 15 children were among those killed in the past 24 hours alone.
‘Images of children burning while sheltering in makeshift tents should shake us all to our core,’ she said in a statement posted to social media.
Since 7 October 2023, Israel has been waging a genocidal war on Gaza, killing over 51,000 Palestinians — most of them women and children — and injuring more than 116,500 others.
Vast areas of the territory have been rendered uninhabitable, with the overwhelming majority of the population displaced, many multiple times.
HAMAS CONDEMNS AL-AQSA INCURSION!
THE Hamas Movement has denounced the latest storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque’s courtyards by Israeli settlers.
It was led on Thursday by far-right Knesset member Tzvi Sukkot, who openly performed religious rituals within the compound in a deliberate act of provocation.
Hamas condemned the incursion as part of Israel’s ongoing campaign to Judaise Islamic sacred sites and forcibly assert control over them.
A video widely shared on social media shows Sukkot, a member of the extremist Religious Zionism party, engaging in what has been described by supporters as a ‘heroic prostration’ near the Dome of the Rock.
The act drew praise from Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who claimed it was the first such public display of Jewish worship at the site in 30 years, crediting the development to his hard-line policies.
Hamas referred to Ben-Gvir in a statement as a ‘terrorist minister’ who is actively intensifying the regime’s assaults on Al-Aqsa Mosque and other holy sites.
‘These actions are part of a broader Zionist effort to erase the Islamic and Arab identity of Al-Quds and Al-Aqsa,’ the statement said.
Hamas asserted that all Israeli policies designed to impose control over Palestinian land and religious sites are destined to collapse with the eventual dismantling of the occupation.
The group called on Arab and Islamic nations to mobilise in defence of Al-Aqsa Mosque, revered as the first Qibla and third holiest site in Islam.
In addition, Hamas urged the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to take immediate and concrete action to defend Jerusalem from what it termed the escalating threat of Judaisation.
The group warned that Israel’s violations are not only directed at Muslims but also encompass attacks on Christian heritage sites across occupied Palestine.
Thursday’s provocation occurred on the fifth day of the Jewish Passover holiday, during a wave of settler invasions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
Thousands of settlers have breached the site throughout the week, responding to calls by Israeli ultra-nationalist groups urging mass visits and religious performances in defiance of the site’s Islamic sanctity and existing legal arrangements.
The compound remains under Israeli military occupation, a status that contravenes international law. Under longstanding agreements, the site is to be administered by Jordanian religious authorities, with access and prayer rights limited to Muslim
worshippers.