Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Nidal al-Mughrabi
CAIRO (Reuters) – An Israeli attack killed at least 30 Palestinians and wounded 50 others hiding in a post office in the central Gaza Strip, raising the death toll in the enclave to 66 on Thursday.
With no sign of abating in the 14-month-old conflict, the strike hit a postal facility in the Nuseirat camp where displaced families were seeking refuge and damaged several nearby houses, medics told Reuters.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Nuseirat is one of eight historic camps in the Gaza Strip originally for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war surrounding the establishment of Israel. Today it is part of a dense urban area filled with displaced people from all over the enclave.
Earlier on Thursday, two Israeli strikes in southern Gaza killed 13 Palestinians who medics in Gaza and Hamas said were part of a force protecting aid trucks. The Israeli military said they were Hamas militants trying to hijack the shipment.
Many of those killed in the attacks on Rafah and Khan Younis had ties to Hamas, according to sources close to the group.
The Israeli military said in a statement that the two airstrikes were aimed at ensuring the safe delivery of humanitarian aid and accused Hamas members of planning to prevent aid from reaching civilians in Gaza in need.
The announcement states that the members of Hamas aimed to steal the aid “in support of the continuation of the terrorist activity”.
Armed gangs have repeatedly hijacked aid trucks, and Hamas has formed a task force to counter them. Hamas-led forces have killed more than two dozen gang members in recent months, Hamas sources and medics said.
Hamas said Israeli military strikes have killed at least 700 police officers tasked with securing aid trucks in Gaza since the war began on October 7, 2023. It accused Israel of trying to protect looting and “creating anarchy and chaos to prevent aid from reaching the people in Gaza”.
Separately, the Israeli military on Thursday ordered residents of several districts in the heart of Gaza City to evacuate, saying it would respond to rockets fired from those areas.
“This is a pre-attack warning,” said a military statement posted on X that some residents also received as text and audio alerts on their cellphones.
The evacuation orders sparked a new wave of displacement. At dusk, dozens of families left the area heading for the city center.
ISRAELI STRIKES IN GAZA CITY, CENTRAL GAZA
Israeli bomb attacks on a residential building on al-Jalaa Street in Gaza City and a house west of Nuseirat killed 22 people, according to medics and the Palestinian WAFA news agency.
In the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, where the army has been operating since October, health officials said Israeli forces killed an orthopedic doctor, Said Judeh, as he was on his way to Al-Awda Hospital where he usually treated patients.
The Ministry of Health said his death brought the number of health workers killed since the start of the war to 1,057.
Months of cease-fire efforts by Arab mediators Egypt and Qatar, backed by the United States, have failed to seal an agreement between the two warring parties.
The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to demand an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire and the immediate release of all hostages captured by Israel in October 2023 and held by Hamas in Gaza.
The war in the Palestinian enclave began after Hamas gunmen stormed Israeli communities, killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages back to Hamas-run Gaza, according to Israeli figures.
Since then, the Israeli military has razed parts of Gaza, driving nearly all 2.3 million people from their homes, causing deadly famine and disease and killing more than 44,800 people, according to Palestinian health authorities.
(Reporting and writing by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Additional reporting by Ali SawaftaEditing by Howard Gowler, William McLean, Frances (BCBA:) Kerry and Cynthia Osterman)
