Israeli air attacks on the Gaza Strip have killed at least 29 people, Gaza’s civil defence agency said, as the United Nations demanded that Israel lift its blockade of the Palestinian territory and allow humanitarian aid to enter.
At least eight people were killed in an Israeli attack that hit the Abu Sahlul family home in Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza, according to civil defence official Mohammed el-Mougher.
Four others were killed in an air strike in the Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City, east of Shaaf, and at least 17 more were killed in other assaults across the enclave on Thursday, including a strike on a tent housing displaced civilians near Deir el-Balah.
Witnesses told the AFP news agency about a trail of devastation in Khan Younis. “We came here and found all these houses destroyed, and children, women and young people all bombed to pieces,” said Ahmed Abu Zarqa. “Enough, we’re tired. We don’t know what to do with our lives any more. We’d rather die than live this kind of life.”
‘Aid should never be a bargaining chip’
The bombardment comes amid dire warnings about the humanitarian situation in the besieged territory, which has been under a total Israeli blockade for two months.
Volker Turk, the UN human rights chief, said the conditions being imposed by Israel on Palestinians in Gaza are “increasingly incompatible with their continued existence as a group”. He warned that starvation as a method of warfare could amount to a war crime.
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has reached a catastrophic level, with Palestinians teetering on the edge of mass starvation, according to Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reporting from the ground.
“Parents have literally started to skip meals and children are now eating spoiled food. Canned food has become a luxury,” he said. Aid-supported bakeries have shut down due to severe shortages, while the World Food Programme has reportedly run out of stock, leaving soup kitchens overwhelmed and barely operational.
“Locals are calling for safe, sustained humanitarian corridors, but say meaningful aid can only enter when Israel permits it,” he added. With the blockade now in its second month, many in Gaza feel they are not just enduring a humanitarian emergency but “an engineered misery” that has unleashed famine on a devastating scale.
Tom Fletcher, the UN’s humanitarian chief, echoed those concerns on Thursday. “Aid, and the civilian lives it saves, should never be a bargaining chip,” he said.
“Blocking aid kills. It inflicts cruel collective punishment.” He criticised an Israeli proposal for private distribution of aid in Gaza, calling it insufficient and not aligned with basic humanitarian principles.
“To the Israeli authorities, and those who can still reason with them, we say again: lift this brutal blockade. Let humanitarians save lives,” he said.
UN agencies, including UNRWA, said more than 3,000 aid trucks are stuck at the Gaza border, unable to deliver essential supplies. Some one million children are said to be at risk. “The siege must be lifted,” UNRWA said in a post on X.
Qatar slams Israel at ICJ
Israel’s obligations to provide humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank are also the subject of a weeklong hearing at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), following a request for an advisory opinion from the UN General Assembly last year.
In the fourth day of hearings on Thursday, Qatar’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Mutlaq al-Qahtani, told the court Israel has continued its “genocidal war against the Palestinian people” and increased settlement efforts in the occupied West Bank.
Palestinians in Gaza continue to face “famine-like conditions” as Israel continues to block “any delivery of life-saving aid”, said Mutlaq al-Qahtani
Israel has jeopardised the existence of the UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, which is the “backbone” of humanitarian and development assistance in the occupied territory, added the Qatari diplomat.