Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli forces killed at least 44 people on Thursday, including 265 in Gaza City where the military has increased bombardments ahead of a planned offensive.
Nearly two years into the devastating conflict, Israel has built up its forces in recent days, with troops operating on the outskirts of Gaza City, the Palestinian territory’s largest urban centre.
The United Nations estimates that nearly one million people live in and around Gaza City in the territory’s north, where it has declared famine.
A senior Israeli military official told journalists on Wednesday that authorities expected the new offensive to capture Gaza City to lead to mass displacement, estimating that a million Palestinians would flee south.
Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that an Israeli air strike on Thursday hit a tent sheltering a a displaced Palestinian family in Gaza City, killing five people including three children.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military requested timeframes and coordinates to comment on specific incidents.
In Tel al-Hawa, the neighbourhood in Gaza City’s west where the strike reported by the civil defence took place, AFP footage showed Palestinians outside damaged tents, clearing up scattered belongings.
A pair of blood-stained pink slippers lay amongst the debris.
Israa al-Basous, who lives there, recounted seeing the tent next to hers on fire.
“My children and I were sleeping in the tent when we heard the sound of bombing. Shrapnel fell on us, and my four children started screaming,” she told AFP.
At Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, where the dead and wounded were being received, bodies wrapped in white shrouds lay on the floor of the hospital’s morgue.
One woman stroked the head of her dead son as his body lay outside on a stretcher.
“Who are you leaving me to, son? Why? Why?” she wept.
Further south, in the Nuseirat refugee camp, the civil defence said an Israeli air strike killed seven people including three children.
AFP footage from Nuseirat showed Palestinian man Yousef Suleiman with his granddaughter, walking through a bombed-out shelter where tattered scraps of material hung from tent poles.
Suleiman said the pre-dawn strike killed his nephew, the nephew’s wife and their two children.
“The entire tent was destroyed, along with everyone inside,” he said.
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 or the Israeli military.
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 64,231 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the United Nations considers reliable.
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© Agence France-Presse
