Gaza death toll tops 60,000 as Israel levels homes in Nuseirat camp
Israel killed dozens of Palestinian children and women in renewed heavy bombing in central Gaza on Tuesday, as the death toll from the ongoing war surpassed 60,000.
Fighter jets carried out a series of strikes on the Nuseirat refugee camp, levelling several residential buildings and killing approximately 40 people, including 14 women and 12 children, according to local media reports.
The targeted homes were said to belong to the Abu Ataya, Siam and Abu Nabhan families.
Emergency teams reported that the scale of destruction has made it difficult to determine an exact death toll. The nearby al-Awda Hospital said that many of the bodies arrived severely dismembered.
Local sources stated that three families were effectively wiped out from the civil registry in what they described as a “massacre”.
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In a separate incident, Israeli forces killed at least 19 Palestinians queuing for food at aid distribution centres.
Air strikes also targeted various other locations across the Gaza Strip, including areas previously designated by Israel as “humanitarian zones”.
Al-Mawasi Field Hospital announced that four civilians were killed and 14 others wounded following an Israeli strike in al-Mawasi, an area in southern Gaza labelled a “safe zone” by Israeli authorities.
By midday, the Palestinian health ministry reported that at least 112 people had been killed in the preceding 24 hours, with a further 637 wounded.
This has brought the death toll from the Israeli war on Gaza since October 2023 to at least 60,034, including at least 18,592 children.
The number of wounded exceeds 145,000, according to the ministry.
Starvation and genocide
The latest wave of heavy bombardment comes amid growing international scrutiny of Israel’s actions in the blockaded Gaza Strip.
Israel has faced criticism over the starvation, killing and displacement of the territory’s population of more than two million.
Two prominent Israeli human rights organisations on Monday accused the Israeli government of committing acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights–Israel (PHRI) each released separate reports, alleging that Israel’s conduct in Gaza constitutes genocidal acts and incitement to genocide.
In its report, B’Tselem examined Israel’s policies in Gaza and statements made by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders on its goals in the enclave. It led the group to “the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip”.
Meanwhile, PHRI’s report presented a detailed legal analysis of Israel’s war on Gaza, focusing on the dismantling of Gaza’s healthcare system.
It stated that Israel’s aggression meets the criteria for genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to which Israel is a signatory.
The world’s leading hunger monitoring system on Tuesday issued a warning that the “worst-case scenario of famine” is unfolding in Gaza due to the Israeli-imposed starvation.
“Latest data indicates that famine thresholds have been reached for food consumption in most of the Gaza Strip and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City,” the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said in a new report.
“Amid relentless conflict, mass displacement, severely restricted humanitarian access, and the collapse of essential services, including healthcare, the crisis has reached an alarming and deadly turning point.”
The warning comes as at least 147 Palestinians, including 88 children, have died from starvation since Israel's war on Gaza began.
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