Two children starved to death at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza yesterday, bringing the total number of those who have died from malnutrition and dehydration to 27.
While the genocidal Israeli regime’s blockade of Gaza is now causing daily deaths from starvation, it is not easing up on its bombing and shelling campaign, killings and maiming many in Khan Younis City and elsewhere, as it prepares for its much-heralded ‘ground operation’ in Rafah.
The Israeli Occupation Force (IOF) flattened entire residential neighbourhoods in Khan Younis, destroying infrastructure in the city’s eastern area, along with an ongoing systematic, controlled demolition of residential homes.
Entire areas in the eastern part of Khan Younis have now been completely cleared of all residential homes or infrastructure.
Renowned Palestine footballer, Mohammed Barakat, Gaza’s first centurion of goals and one of its top scorers, was killed in Khan Younis.
The Ahli Gaza forward and national team player was killed after Israel bombed his house yesterday morning.
Barakat scored 114 goals in his career. He is the historic captain and legend of Khan Younis Youth Club and has played for a variety of clubs in the occupied West Bank and Jordan, including Al-Wehdat.
‘What a huge loss on and off the pitch for Palestinian football. I have played against him. He was quick and clever. A top, top goal-scorer. Off the pitch, he was kind and friendly. A beloved friend of all,’ Khadamat al-Maghazi defender, Khalid Abu-Habel, said.
‘I am too angry. He is a football icon. Sports in Gaza have lost a lot during the war. How many more should we lose? The sports community in Gaza is simply collapsing.’
A residential home was attacked, with people from one family killed and multiple others injured transferred to al-Najjar Hospital in central Rafah, with three people killed in ongoing artillery shelling.
It broke out along with an air strike that targeted empty residential homes in the eastern part of the city and nearby farmland.
Among the worst of what happened yesterday was in the early hours of the morning in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City, where residential homes with at least two displaced families were targeted and at least 16 people killed in the attack, mostly women and children and elderly.
At least 31,112 people in Gaza have been killed and 72,760 wounded by Israeli attacks since October 7th.
- Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi has said restrictions imposed by Israel on Muslim worshippers’ access to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound during the Muslim fasting month is pushing the situation towards an ‘explosion’.
Safadi said his country rejects Israel’s announced move to limit access to the holy site during Ramadan claiming security needs with war raging in Gaza.
Jordan echoes the Palestinian view that such restrictions are an attack on freedom of worship, he said.
