UPDATES WITH LATEST DEATH TOLL; REVISES HEADLINE, LEDE
By Ikram Kouachi, Ramzi Mahmud and Rania Abu Shamala
GAZA CITY, Palestine/ANKARA/ISTANBUL (AA) — Fresh Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip killed at least 19 Palestinians on Saturday, medical sources told Anadolu.
The sources at the Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat said that six of the Palestinians, including four children, were killed when Israeli forces bombed a home in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
In a separate attack, an Israeli drone struck a tent sheltering displaced families in the al-Mawasi area, north of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, killing a man and his wife.
Several others were also reported injured in both strikes, with hospitals warning of worsening shortages of beds and medical supplies amid the ongoing bombardment.
Five more Palestinians were shot dead and several others injured while waiting for aid near the Zikim crossing, northwest of Gaza City.
Two Palestinians were also killed by Israeli army fire near an aid distribution center in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
A fisherman was killed and another was wounded when Israeli naval forces opened fire on them off the coast of Gaza City.
A Palestinian woman was killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit a tent sheltering displaced people in the Sheikh Ijlin neighborhood of Gaza City.
In Khan Younis, two Palestinians were killed and 15 others injured in an Israeli airstrike targeting tents sheltering displaced people.
Separately, Ismail al-Thawabta, director of the Government Media Office in Gaza, said the ongoing Israeli assault on the Zeitoun neighborhood in Gaza City, now in its sixth day, has displaced hundreds of families, leaving them without shelter.
Thawabta described the attacks as part of a “systematic Israeli policy aimed at widespread destruction, forced displacement of Palestinians, and imposing a new demographic reality by force.”
The Israeli military has demolished some 400 homes over the past six days in the Zeitoun neighborhood in the central Gaza Strip, according to the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.
Israel has killed nearly 61,900 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave and brought it to the verge of famine.
Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.