By Abdul Adil
(AA, Al Jazeera, Wafa, INN): At least 55 more Palestinians were killed in Israeli indiscriminate attacks in the Gaza Strip, pushing up the overall death toll since last year to 42,847, the Health Ministry in the enclave said on Thursday.
A ministry statement added that some 100,544 others were injured in the ongoing assault.
“The Israeli occupation has committed four massacres of families in the last 24 hours, resulting in 55 deaths and 132 injuries,” the ministry said.
“Many people are still trapped under the rubble and on the roads as rescuers are unable to reach them,” it added.
Meanwhile in Lebanon, Israeli army killed 28 people, injured 139 bringnig total number of people killed to 2,593 and injuring 12, 199, according to Lebanese Ministry of Health.
GAZA
Meanwhile, more than 150 Palestinians were killed and injured Thursday evening in Israeli airstrikes targeting about 10 homes in Jabalia, northern Gaza, where a siege began 20 days ago.
“A horrific massacre is unfolding in Jabalia, with over 150 martyrs and injured people due to Israeli shelling. No one is moving to rescue them,” the Gaza civil defense said in a statement.
The statement added that the Israeli military targeted homes belonging to the Najjar, Abu Al-Ouf, Salman, Hijazi, Abu Al-Qumsan, Aqel Abu Rashid, Abu Al-Tarabish, Zaqoul, and Shaalan families.
“The (Israeli) occupation forces bombed an entire residential block in the area, and citizens are calling for help to transport the wounded even now,” the statement said.
“Residents are facing extreme difficulty in evacuating the dead and wounded after the Israeli forces disrupted the operations of civil defense and medical services in the northern part of Gaza.”
Gaza’s Civil Defence agency says Israeli forces are deliberately attacking rescue teams in northern Gaza.
Mahmoud Basal, the agency’s spokesman, said first responders have been “targeted” on several occasions, leaving “several members injured, and others are left bleeding on the streets with no one able to rescue them”.
Bassal published a photograph of a burned truck on social media saying it was “the only civil defence vehicle in the northern Gaza Strip governorate”. The truck was “targeted by the Israeli army” in the northern city of Beit Lahiya, just north of Jabalia and near Gaza’s northern border with Israel.
“We are unable to provide humanitarian services to citizens in the northern governorate of the Gaza Strip due to threats from Israeli occupation forces, who have threatened to kill and bomb our teams if they remain inside Jabalia camp,” he said.
At least 17 Palestinians were killed, including an 11-month-old baby, and 42 wounded in an Israeli attack on a school-turned-shelter in central Gaza’s Nuseirat camp.
Israeli forces laid siege in the north about three weeks ago, attacking from air and ground, surrounding hospitals and refugee shelters, and ordering residents to head south. Hospitals in the area have either stopped providing medical services or are hardly operating because of the offensive.
Two Palestinians were killed and 20 others, including children and women, were injured Thursday as a result of Israeli artillery shelling targeting the eastern areas of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
A medical source at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis told Anadolu Agency that two bodies and 20 injured individuals, including children and women, were brought to the hospital following Israeli shelling in the eastern parts of the city.
Earlier, Israeli artillery targeted the neighborhoods of Al-Manara, Maen, Sheikh Nasser, and the outskirts of Qizan Al-Najjar in the southern and eastern parts of the city, witnesses told Anadolu.
Witnesses reported a mass displacement of hundreds of Palestinian families due to the ongoing Israeli bombardment affecting several neighborhoods in the area.
They added that the intense artillery shelling appears to be a precursor to a potential ground incursion into the city’s eastern regions.
At least 17 people were killed and 52 others injured in a new Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced civilians in the central Gaza Strip, local authorities said on Thursday.
The attack targeted the school in the refugee camp of Nuseirat in central Gaza, the government media office said in a statement.
“The (Israeli) occupation army was well aware that the Nuseirat Martyrs School houses thousands of displaced people, mostly women and children,” it added in a statement.
According to the media office, at least 196 schools and shelters have been targeted by Israeli attacks since the start of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza last year.
“This massacre comes in parallel with the Israeli occupation plan to bring down the health sector in Gaza and to destroy the hospitals,” it added.
LEBANON
The death toll from Israel’s onslaught on Lebanon since Oct. 8 last year has surged to 2,593, the Lebanese Health Ministry said Wednesday.
A ministry statement said 28 people were killed and 139 wounded in Israeli attacks Thursday across Lebanon, raising the number of injured to over 12,000.
Israel has mounted a huge air campaign in Lebanon against what it claims are Hezbollah targets since Sept. 23, displacing more than 1.34 million people.
An Israeli warplane fired a missile onto a car in the Aalay district in Mount Lebanon in eastern Beirut, leaving two dead, the NNA reported.
Seven people were killed and 14 others injured in another airstrike targeting a home in the town of Khodor in eastern Lebanon.
A drone strike also targeted a motorbike in the southern city of Tyre, killing one person.
At least 19 people were killed and 118 others injured in Israeli attacks across Lebanon on Wednesday, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry
The latest fatalities brought the overall death toll in the country since last year to 2593, with 12,119 injuries, a ministry statement said Thursday.
At least 14 people were killed in fresh Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon on Thursday, state media said.
An Israeli warplane fired a missile onto a car in the Aalay district in Mount Lebanon, east of Beirut, leaving two people dead, state news agency NNA reported.
Seven people were killed and 14 others injured in another airstrike targeting a home in the town of Khodor in eastern Lebanon.
A drone strike also targeted a motorbike in the southern city of Tyre, killing one person.
Meanwhile, an Israeli airstrike on the town of Borj Qalaouiye in southern Lebanon killed the town’s mayor.
A Lebanese army officer and two soldiers were killed in an Israeli airstrike as they were evacuating the wounded in the town of Yater, according to a military statement.
The Israeli army has been conducting ground assaults in southern Lebanon for three weeks but a three-pronged offensive has not achieved any of its objectives.
Israeli Army spokesperson Daniel Hagari announced Sept. 30 the commencement of “limited and intense” operations aimed at targeting Hezbollah’s infrastructure in the region. Tens of thousands of soldiers from five divisions have since attempted to penetrate Lebanese territory from three axes.
Despite those efforts, Lebanese officials report that the Israeli army has failed to secure control of any areas in southern Lebanon.
Prime Minister Najib Mikati noted that the Israeli army is conducting hit-and-run attacks on border villages.
“The enemy has not fully controlled any village, and there are enough resistance fighters on the frontlines,” said Hezbollah Member of Parliament Hassan Fadlallah.
The Israeli army has maintained complete secrecy about its operations in Lebanon, issuing limited reports of losses during fighting with the Lebanese group.
At least five people were killed in fresh Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon on Thursday amid a devastating air campaign on the country, local media said.
An Israeli warplane fired a missile into a car in the Aalay district in Mount Lebanon, east of Beirut, leaving two people dead, the state news agency NNA reported.
Two more people were killed in another airstrike targeting a home in the town of Khodor in eastern Lebanon, the broadcaster said.
A drone strike also targeted a motorbike in the southern city of Tyre, killing one person, the NNA said
Three Lebanese Army soldiers were killed in an Israeli airstrike while attempting to rescue injured people from the aggressive forces’ earlier attack on southern Lebanon, according to an official statement issued Thursday morning.
The Israeli attack is the second deadliest on the Lebanese Army in four days.
“The Israeli enemy targeted Lebanese army personnel in the vicinity of Yater village, in Bint Jbeil in the south, while carrying out an operation to evacuate wounded, resulting in three martyrs, including an officer,” the Lebanese Army said in the statement.
The Israeli army has yet to comment on the latest attack.
Earlier on Sunday, the Israeli army killed three soldiers when it targeted their military vehicle in southern Lebanon.
An Israeli airstrike, meanwhile, on the town of Borj Qalaouiye in southern Lebanon killed the town’s mayor.
A Lebanese army officer and two soldiers were killed in an airstrike as they were evacuating the wounded in the town of Yater, according to a military statement.
Five more people were killed in an initial toll from a strike on a house in the town of Al-Halaniyah in Baalbak-Hermel province in eastern Lebanon.
Hezbollah said Thursday it destroyed an Israeli tank in Ayta Ash-Shaab in southern Lebanon, killing and injuring the crew.
The Lebanese group said it attacked the tank with a “guided missile,” causing it to catch fire, and the crew was either killed or wounded.
Earlier, the group said its fighters were engaged in ongoing “intense” clashes at “point-blank range” using machine guns and rocket-propelled weapons against Israeli vehicles in Ayta Ash-Shaab.
Hezbollah also targeted the Israeli Zevulun military base for industrial purposes, north of Haifa with “a rocket salvo.”
It struck the Saint Jean military base in Nahariya in northern Israel with “a rocket salvo.”
Hezbollah announced that it bombed the Nishrim base southeast of Haifa in northern Israel with “precision missiles.”
the state news agency.
In Kfar Tebnit in the Nabatieh district, warplanes and drones carried out airstrikes, killing four people and destroying homes and buildings, the agency reported.
Israeli army confirms deaths of 5 officers in southern Lebanon.
The Israeli army confirmed that two of the deceased were sergeants first class, while the other two held the rank of sergeant, all serving in Battalion 222 of the Carmeli Brigade.
Some 757 Israeli soldiers killed, 5,065 others injured since outbreak of Gaza conflict last year.
Israel army using Palestinians as human shields
Israel has used Palestinians as human shields in the besieged Gaza Strip, forcing detainees into potentially booby-trapped buildings and tunnels to avoid casualties among its ranks, according to a report published Thursday.
The CNN report is based on testimonies from an Israeli soldier and five former detainees. The soldier said the practice was widespread among Israeli units operating in Gaza, and acknowledged his unit detained two Palestinians for the explicit purpose of using them as human shields.
“We told them to enter the building before us,” he said. “If there are any booby traps, they will explode and not us.”
The practice is so commonplace that Israeli forces pejoratively call it the “mosquito protocol.” But CNN said the extent that the practice is employed is not firmly understood, but has taken place in northern Gaza, Gaza City, Khan Younis and Rafah.
The soldier told the news network that in the spring an Israeli intelligence officer came to his unit with two Palestinians — a 16-year-old boy and a 20-year-old — and instructed the soldiers to use them as human shields, claiming they were somehow connected to Hamas. When the soldier questioned the directive, the officer replied, “It’s better that the Palestinian will explode and not our soldiers.”
“It’s quite shocking, but after a few months in Gaza you [tend not to] think clearly,” the soldier said. “You’re just tired. Obviously, I prefer that my soldiers live. But, you know, that’s not how the world works.”
The soldier said he and other members of his unit complained to a senior officer who first instructed them not to “think about international law,” before he eventually acquiesced and freed the two Palestinians.
Their release, the soldier said, showed that they were not affiliated with the Palestinian group, and “that they are not terrorists.”
[Photo: Fire brigades and local residents trying to put out fire after Israeli attacks on Maghazi refugee camp in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza on 24 10, 2024. Photojournalist: Anas Zeyad Fteha/ AA]
