Airstrikes kill 90 Palestinians in 2 homes, rescuers and health officials say
More than 90 Palestinians, including dozens from an extended family, were killed in Israeli airstrikes on two homes, rescuers and hospital officials said Saturday, a day after the UN chief warned again that nowhere is safe in Gaza and that Israel’s offensive is creating “massive obstacles” to distribution of humanitarian aid.
Also Saturday, the Israeli military said troops arrested hundreds of alleged militants in Gaza over the past week and transferred more than 200 of them to Israel for further interrogation, providing rare details on a controversial policy of mass roundups of Palestinian men. The army said more than 700 people with alleged ties to the Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad have so far been sent to Israeli lockups.
Israel declared war after Hamas militants stormed across the border on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people and taking some 240 hostages. Israel has vowed to keep up the fight until Hamas is destroyed and removed from power in Gaza and all the hostages are freed.
Hamas issued a statement on Saturday saying it has lost contact with the group responsible for five Israeli hostages being held captive in the Gaza Strip due to Israeli bombardment.
The group believes the hostages were killed during an Israeli raid, Abu Ubaida, the spokesman of Hamas’s armed wing Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades was quoted as saying.
Health officials in Gaza on Saturday said that since the start of the war, 20,258 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza, a besieged territory ruled by the Islamic militant group Hamas for the past 16 years.
UN employee, journalist among the dead
On Friday, airstrikes flattened two homes, one in Gaza City and the other in the urban refugee camp of Nuseirat in the centre of the territory.
The Gaza City strike killed 76 people from the al-Mughrabi family, making it one of the deadliest of the war, said Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesperson for Gaza’s Civil Defence department. He provided the names of 16 heads of households within the family, and said the dead included women and children.
Among those killed were Issam al-Mughrabi, a veteran employee of the UN Development Program, his wife, and their five children.
“The loss of Issam and his family has deeply affected us all. The UN and civilians in Gaza are not a target,” said Achim Steiner, the head of the agency. “This war must end.”
Later Friday, a strike destroyed the Nuseirat home of Mohammed Khalifa, a local TV journalist, killing him and at least 14 others, according to officials at the nearby Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital where the bodies were taken. Mourners held funeral prayers Saturday in the hospital’s courtyard while rescue teams continued to search for survivors. The legs of at least two bodies were seen under what appeared to be a collapsed roof.
UN Security Council calls for immediate aid and delivery of aid to Gaza
The United Nations Security Council adopted a watered-down resolution Friday calling for immediate aid deliveries to hungry and desperate civilians in Gaza, but without the original call for an “urgent suspension of hostilities” between Israel and Hamas.
The United States won the removal of a tougher call for an “urgent suspension of hostilities” between Israel and Hamas. It abstained in the vote, as did Russia, which wanted the stronger language. The resolution was the first on the war to make it through the council after the U.S. vetoed two earlier ones calling for humanitarian pauses and a full ceasefire.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres reiterated his longstanding call for a humanitarian ceasefire. He expressed hope that Friday’s resolution may help this happen but said “much more is needed immediately” to end the ongoing “nightmare” for the people in Gaza.
He told a news conference that it’s a mistake to measure the effectiveness of the humanitarian operation in Gaza by the number of trucks.
“The real problem is that the way Israel is conducting this offensive is creating massive obstacles to the distribution of humanitarian aid inside Gaza,” he said. He said the prerequisites for an effective aid operation don’t exist — security; staff that can work in safety; logistical capacity, especially trucks; and the resumption of commercial activity.
Israel’s aerial and ground offensive has displaced nearly 85 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people and levelled wide swaths of the tiny coastal enclave. More than half a million people in Gaza — a quarter of the population — are starving, according to a report this week from the United Nations and other agencies.
The military spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said late Friday that forces are widening the ground offensive “to additional areas of the strip, with a focus on the south.” He said operations were also continuing in the northern half of Gaza, the initial focus of Israel’s ground offensive. The army said that it carried out airstrikes against Hamas fighters in several locations of Gaza City.
The army statement on detentions followed earlier Palestinian reports of large-scale roundups of teenage boys and men from homes, shelters and hospitals in northern Gaza where ground troops have established firmer control. Some of the released detainees have said they were stripped to their underwear, beaten and held for days with minimal water.
Hamas called on the International Committee of the Red Cross and other global organizations to put pressure on Israeli authorities to reveal the whereabouts and conditions of hundreds of people in Gaza who were detained.
Israel’s military has denied abuse allegations and said those without links to militants were quickly released.
Israel says it has killed thousands of Hamas militants, including about 2,000 in the past three weeks, but has not presented evidence. It says 139 of its soldiers have been killed in the ground offensive.
Following the UN resolution, it was not immediately clear how and when aid deliveries would accelerate. Currently, trucks enter through two crossings — Rafah on the border with Egypt and Kerem Shalom on the border with Israel. Both were closed Saturday by mutual agreement among Israel, Egypt and the UN, Israeli officials said.
Ahead of the Security Council vote, the U.S. negotiated the removal of language that would have given the UN authority to inspect aid going into Gaza.