By Nadine Osman
Palestine (The Muslim News): At least 22 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes overnight Friday across the Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian news agency, WAFA.
Israeli planes bombed two residences in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza and the Al-Manara area in the southern city of Khan Younis.
News of the latest casualties of Israel’s indiscriminate killing comes as the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor announced that more than 90,000 Gazans (4% of the population) are dead, wounded, or unaccounted for.
According to the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel’s continued air, land, and sea shelling has damaged more than 70% of the civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip since October 7.
“Israel is pushing hundreds of thousands of civilians towards mass forced displacement,” said the group in a statement.
Hundreds of bodies that cannot be recovered remain on roads, notably in regions where the Israeli army has conducted ground assaults.
According to the group, Israel’s attacks are an “apparent attempt” to extend its territory to include the whole Gaza Strip, uprooting the majority of the population in violation of international law, which “likely amounts to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.”
Referring to reports that Israel is prohibiting humanitarian supplies from entering the Strip more frequently, Euro-Med noted that Israel is using “starvation as a weapon.”
It reaffirmed calls for UN special rapporteurs and the International Criminal Court prosecutor to investigate “violations that have been widely documented since Israel began its genocidal war on Gaza.”
The onslaught has left Gaza in ruins, with 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure damaged or destroyed and nearly 2 million residents displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine.
The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report has more harrowing points about the situation in the Gaza Strip.
As of January 3, only 13 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals were “partially functional,” and even those faced staff and medical supply shortages. Fuel, food, and drinking water are all “urgent” requirements for all medical facilities.
There are only nine partially functional hospitals in the south, where most Gazans have been forced to go by Israeli bombardment, and they are operating at three times their capacity.
The risk of famine “is increasing daily,” and UN agencies’ plans to expand ready-to-eat food options “are falling short of meeting people’s crucial caloric needs”.
Every citizen in Gaza has been classified as being in “urgent need of food assistance” every day, although daily assistance reached only 8% of the targeted population on average in the last week of December.
An overwhelming majority of Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced internally, with the latest report by OCHA putting the number at a staggering 85 percent at the end of 2023.
The 1.9 million internally displaced Palestinians include many who have been displaced multiple times, as families are forced to move repeatedly in search of safety, which is guaranteed nowhere in the Strip.
Nearly 1.4 million of these internally displaced people are sheltering in 155 UNRWA facilities across all five governorates in the Strip. All the facilities are “far exceeding their intended capacity”.
Following intensified Israeli attacks on Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah, more than one million people were crammed into an extremely overcrowded space in the Rafah governorate.
According to Gaza Ministry of Health, 22,722 Palestinians have been killed, including 9,600 children, 6,750 women and 58,166 injured and 7,000 missing since October 7.
According to Israeli authorities 1,139 Israelis were killed on October 7 in Israel. 129 Israelis are still held captive by Hamas in Gaza.
[Photo: Injured Palestinian boy being carried to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital for medical treatment. He was injured by Israeli bombaredment in Deir al Balah, Gaza on 5 1 24. Photojournalist :Ashraf Amra/ AA]
