More than 74 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in a wave of Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip, deepening an already catastrophic toll after 19 months of unrelenting bombardment.
At least 57 people were killed overnight and into Thursday in a barrage of strikes on residential areas in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, according to local health officials. Medical staff at Nasser Medical Complex reported an influx of casualties, many of them children.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, displaced Palestinian Hasan Moqbel described the continuing assault as a war on civilians. “They have been bombing Gaza for 19 months. What’s left in Gaza? Innocent children are dying. There is no armed activity here. Most of them are elderly people who are dying,” he said.
Among those killed was Palestinian journalist Hassan Samour. He and several members of his family were killed when an Israeli strike targeted their home in Bani Suheila, a town east of Khan Younis.
Earlier this week, another Palestinian journalist, Hassan Aslih, was killed in an Israeli drone attack on the emergency wing of Nasser Hospital. He had been receiving treatment for injuries sustained in a previous Israeli strike.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed more than 170 journalists and media workers, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), making Gaza one of the deadliest places in the world for the press.
The latest killings have triggered new waves of forced displacement. Thousands fled Gaza City on Thursday after the Israeli military issued sudden forced evacuation orders.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reported scenes of panic and fear as residents packed their belongings and tried to escape the expected onslaught.
“We’re seeing families carrying their belongings and taking to the streets,” Mahmoud said. “The children and elderly are carrying whatever they’re able to carry … They don’t know where to go. There is no safe place for these people – the so-called shelters have already been destroyed by Israeli bombs.”
‘We have to flatten the West Bank’
Meanwhile, the Israeli government appears to be laying the groundwork for a parallel escalation in the occupied West Bank.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a key figure in Israel’s far-right coalition, has openly called for military forces to destroy Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank, echoing the destruction witnessed in Gaza.
“Just as we are flattening Rafah, Khan Younis and Gaza, we have to flatten the terror hubs,” Smotrich said, referring specifically to the Palestinian village of Bruqin, where an Israeli settler was killed on Wednesday evening.
Israeli forces launched new raids across the occupied West Bank at dawn on Thursday, storming cities and refugee camps including Tubas, Nablus, Bethlehem and Dura. Residents in Qalandia, Ya’bad, Fawwar and Askar camps also reported house raids, arrests and what rights groups describe as systematic abuse.
Palestinians remember the Nakba
The calls to escalate violence in the West Bank come as Palestinians mark the 77th anniversary of the Nakba, or catastrophe, when more than 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled by Zionist militias during the creation of Israel in 1948.
More than 530 villages and towns were razed, and the majority of the Palestinian population was either killed or exiled. The newly created state of Israel seized 78 percent of historic Palestine. The remaining 22 percent – the West Bank and Gaza Strip – were occupied by Israel following the 1967 war and remain under military control.
Since October 2023, the Israeli army’s brutal offensive in Gaza has killed nearly 53,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
As the bombing continues and the death toll rises, rights groups, media freedom advocates and Palestinian civilians are warning of a campaign of deliberate annihilation.
Source: Aljazeera
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