Gaza civil defence says 12 killed by Israeli forces

Yahoo

a day ago

Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli forces killed at least 12 people on Monday, including six in a clinic housing Palestinians displaced after 21 months of war.
Israel has recently expanded its military operations in the Gaza Strip, where the war has created dire humanitarian conditions for the Palestinian territory's population of more than two million.
Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that six people were killed and 15 injured in an Israeli air strike that hit the Al-Rimal clinic, "which houses hundreds of displaced people, in the Al-Rimal neighbourhood west of Gaza City."
AFP footage showed Palestinians, including groups of young children, combing through the bombed-out interior of the clinic, where mattresses lay alongside wood, metal and concrete broken apart in the blast.
"We were surprised by missiles and explosions inside the building," eyewitness Salman Qudum told AFP.
"We did not know where to go because of the dust and destruction."
In the south of the territory, Bassal said two people were killed and 20 others injured by Israeli forces' gunfire while waiting for aid near a distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) northwest of Rafah.
In response to an AFP request for comment, the army said that soldiers "fired warning shots" to drive away "suspects" who tried to approach troops.
"All the warning shots were fired approximately hundreds of meters from the aid distribution site, prior to its opening hours", the army said, adding the incident would be reviewed.
A US- and Israel-backed group, the GHF took the lead in food distribution in the territory in late May, but its operations have had a chaotic rollout with repeated reports of aid seekers killed near its facilities.
The Red Cross has reported "a sharp surge in mass casualty incidents linked to aid distribution sites" over the past month, which has "overwhelmed Gaza's shattered healthcare system".
In a statement, the ICRC said its 60-bed field hospital in Rafah "has been running beyond maximum capacity almost daily."
"Its staff are racing to treat an unrelenting tide of injuries, the vast majority caused by gunfire," it said.
- Hundreds reported killed -
The UN human rights office said last week that more than 500 people have been killed waiting to access food from GHF distribution points.
In Khan Yunis in the south, Bassal reported two people killed in an air strike on a house and another killed by Israeli gunfire.
An air strike on a house in Gaza City killed one and injured several others, he added.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.
In a separate statement, it said it had struck "dozens of terrorists, weapons depots, observation posts, military buildings, and other terror infrastructures" over the past 24 hours.
Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defence agency.
Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Out of 251 hostages seized during the attack, 49 are still held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel's retaliatory campaign has killed more than 57,523 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The United Nations considers its figures reliable.
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