Israeli attacks kill dozens in Gaza, Lebanon as ceasefire remains elusive

Israeli attacks kill dozens in Gaza, Lebanon as ceasefire remains elusive

The Israeli military has killed dozens more people in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon as it expands its attacks while ceasefire talks appear to be going nowhere.

At least 55 people were killed across Gaza in the past 24 hours, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry. Fourteen of them were killed in a series of Israeli air strikes and shelling from warships in central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp on Friday, medical officials at al-Awda Hospital said.

“People are arriving to the hospital in carts pulled by animals, because it’s quite hard for civil defence and front-line emergency workers to reach the area, as Israeli military drones are actively operating there,” Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reported from Deir el-Balah as the bombs fell a few kilometres away.

One of the targets in Nuseirat was a school-turned-shelter for displaced Palestinians, bringing the total number of such centres hit since the start of the war to close to 200.

Abu Mohammed al-Taweel, a witness of the Israeli attacks on Nuseirat, said he saw many people killed after multiple family homes were targeted, with a five-month-old baby among the dead.

“The Israelis are eager to kill Palestinian children and women. There are no resistance fighters in the camp. They hit us without any prior warning,” he told Al Jazeera.

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“We are here to die. We are ready to die. I was not killed today, but I will definitely be killed tomorrow. No safe places here in the Gaza Strip. Massacres are being committed everywhere.”

The Israeli onslaught on the enclave continued in other parts, with deadly strikes killing dozens more reported in Khan Younis in the south and Gaza City in the north.

The situation continues to be catastrophic in northern Gaza, where the Israeli military keeps up a siege as it blocks humanitarian aid and tries to force Palestinians to flee the area.

“The situation unfolding in North Gaza is apocalyptic,” the heads of major United Nations agencies said on Friday. “The entire Palestinian population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence,” added the joint statement from heads of organisations that form the UN Inter-Agency Standing Committee.

On Thursday, Israeli forces targeted multiple areas of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north, including its stash of medicine delivered five days earlier by the World Health Organization and a water desalination plant.

At least two children died in the intensive care unit after the hospital’s generators stopped and the oxygen station was targeted, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

The Government Media Office in Gaza reported on Friday that the number of journalists killed by Israeli since the start of the war has risen to 183.

The official death toll in Gaza now stands at 43,259 people with 101,827 wounded, but the real number of casualties is believed to be much higher.

Israeli attacks kill dozens in Gaza, Lebanon as ceasefire remains elusive

Source: Al Jazeera