Number of Palestinians martyred in the result of Israeli air strikes on Gaza on 6th consecutive day reached 1,354
GAZA, Oct 12 (SABAH): The number of Palestinians martyred in the result of the Israeli air strikes on Gaza on 6th consecutive day reached 1,354 on Thursday. The Gaza health ministry has informed that in result of the siege of Gaza by Israel from last Saturday 6,049 Palestinians have been injured. Meanwhile over 1,200 Israelis have been killed in result of the Hamas attacks. According to a latest report, 11 officials of the United Nations have also been killed in result of the war in Gaza.
More than 338,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip, the United Nations said, as heavy Israeli bombardments continue to hit the Palestinian enclave.
“Mass displacement across the Gaza Strip continues,” the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said in a statement sent on Thursday.
By late Wednesday, the number of displaced people in Gaza had risen by an additional 75,000 people from the figure given 24 hours earlier, reaching 338,934, it said.
OCHA said nearly 220,000 people, or two-thirds of the displaced people, have sought shelter in schools run by the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
Another nearly 15,000 people fled to schools run by the Palestinian Authority, while more than 100,000 were being sheltered by relatives, neighbours and a church and other facilities in Gaza City.
OCHA said that around 3,000 people had already been displaced within the enclave prior to Saturday’s attack.
The bombing campaign has destroyed or rendered uninhabitable at least 2,540 housing units in Gaza, OCHA said, citing numbers from the Gaza Ministry of Public Works and Housing.
Another 22,850 housing units sustained moderate to minor damage, it said.
The UN agency also voiced alarm at the significant destruction of civilian infrastructure damaged in the shelling.
Among other things, it said sewage facilities serving more than a million people had been hit by air strikes, leaving solid waste accumulating in the streets, posing a health threat.
Amid Israel’s complete blockade of the besieged territory, a group of independent United Nations (UN) experts on Thursday deplored that relentless strikes against Gaza amounted to “collective punishment,” as the death toll in the region surged past 1,300 with the war entering its sixth day on Thursday.
Israel said on Thursday there would be no humanitarian break to its siege of the Gaza Strip until all its hostages were freed after the Red Cross pleaded for fuel to be allowed in to prevent overwhelmed hospitals from “turning into morgues”.
Israel has vowed to annihilate the Hamas movement that rules the Gaza Strip in retribution for the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, when hundreds of gunmen poured across the barrier fence and rampaged through Israeli towns on Saturday.
Public broadcaster Kan said the Israeli death toll had risen to more than 1,300 people killed since Saturday. Most were civilians gunned down in their homes, on the streets or at a dance party. Scores of Israeli and foreign hostages were taken back to Gaza.
Israel has responded so far by putting the enclave, home to 2.3 million people, under total siege and launching by far the most powerful bombing campaign, destroying whole neighbourhoods.
Gaza authorities report 1,354 people have been martyred and 6,049 people have been wounded in the bombing. The sole electric power station has been switched off and hospitals are running out of fuel for emergency generators.
Israeli Energy Minister Israel Katz vowed his country would not allow basic resources or humanitarian aid into Gaza until Hamas released the hostages it took during its surprise weekend attack on Israel after the United Nations (UN) called for allowing humanitarian aid into the besieged territory.
“Humanitarian aid to Gaza? No electric switch will be turned on, no water tap will be opened and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home,” he said in a statement.
While condemning the “horrific crimes committed by Hamas”, the group of independent UN experts said that Israel had resorted to “indiscriminate military attacks against the already exhausted Palestinian people of Gaza,” a foreign news agency reported.
“They have lived under unlawful blockade for 16 years, and already gone through five major brutal wars, which remain unaccounted for,” the group, which includes several UN special rapporteurs, said in a statement.
“This amounts to collective punishment. There is no justification for violence that indiscriminately targets innocent civilians, whether by Hamas or Israeli forces.
This is absolutely prohibited under international law and amounts to a war crime.”
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for allowing humanitarian aid into war-struck Gaza, with the death toll in the region surging past 1,3000 as the war enters its sixth day on Thursday.
Days after Israel announced a total blockade of Gaza, The UN chief took to X, formerly known as Twitter, saying the supply of humanitarian aid, including food and water, “must be allowed” into Gaza.
“Crucial life-saving supplies — including fuel, food and water — must be allowed into Gaza. We need rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access now,” the UN chief wrote on X.
While addressing the Jewish community in the US Wednesday, President Joe Biden vividly described the horrors of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Soon after he made the claims that he believed based on confirmed pictures, the White House was forced to retract his statements.
In broad statements regarding his administration’s support for Israel amid its conflict with Hamas and efforts to release US hostages, Biden said, “I never really thought that I would see and have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children.”
According to officials from the White House, Biden was alluding to allegations from Israel of children being killed, referencing several media reports of beheadings.
Heavy bombardments have been relentlessly rained down on Gaza, where at least 2,540 housing units have been levelled or rendered uninhabitable, according to the Gaza Ministry of Public Works and Housing.
Rubble, burnt-out cars and broken glass cover the roads in Gaza City, where bombs struck the Hamas-linked Islamic University.
There is rising concern over the worsening humanitarian crisis in the long-blockaded Palestinian enclave, where the sole power plant shut down Wednesday after running out of fuel, Gaza’s electricity provider said.
Additionally, medical supplies, including oxygen, were running low at Gaza’s overwhelmed Al-Shifa hospital, said emergency room physician Mohammed Ghonim.
The European Union called for a “humanitarian corridor” to allow civilians to flee the enclave’s fifth war in 15 years, while Arab League foreign ministers meeting in Cairo called for aid to be allowed into Gaza “immediately”.
Gaza resident Mazen Mohammad, 38, said his terrified family spent the night huddled together as explosions shook the area, before emerging in the morning.
“We felt like we were in a ghost town as if we were the only survivors,” Mohammad told media.