Dozens Killed in Israeli Attack on Gaza; Palestinians say Amnesty’s ‘genocide’ announcement too late News Today News

Israeli forces killed at least 39 Palestinians in overnight raids in the Gaza Strip, medics said Thursday, including at least 20 in an attack that set fire to tents sheltering displaced families in an overcrowded camp.

Residents pulled carpet-wrapped bodies from the charred ruins of makeshift shelters in Mawassi, near the beach west of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, where thousands of people had sheltered for months. Israel calls the area a humanitarian zone and has long told people to move there for their safety.

Mourners said the latest attacks demonstrated that the international human rights group Amnesty International’s new declaration that Israel was to blame for the massacre in Gaza – which Israel vehemently denies – had come too late. Doctors in Gaza have confirmed that women and children were among the 20 people killed in the Israeli attack. Israel said it targeted senior Hamas operatives, whose identities have not been released.

The strike burnt several large tents and fueled the fire by burning cooking gas canisters and furniture of displaced people. On Thursday, the area was strewn with charred clothes, mattresses and other items among the broken frames of the burnt shelters.

“We don’t see the whole world standing by us or helping us in this situation. Let them stop this crazy war that is against us. Let them stop the war,” said Abu Kamal al-Asr, a witness at the scene.

The day of the attack came Amnesty International has released its report Israel’s actions in Gaza met the definition of the crime of genocide, he said. Israel vehemently denied the allegations, denouncing Amnesty as a “sad and radical organization”.

At Khan Younis’ funeral, where relatives wept over the white shrouds of those killed the day before, resident Abu Anas Mustafa called the Amnesty report “a victory for Palestinian diplomacy”, although he said it “came late”.

“Today is the 430th day of the war, and Israel has been killing and killing since the first ten days of the war,” he said.

Other Israeli attacks were reported in Gaza City on Thursday, where medics said the attack destroyed a house where an extended family was sheltering and damaged two nearby houses, killing at least three people.

The Israeli military said militants often use residential buildings, schools and hospitals for operational cover. Hamas denies this, accusing the Israeli army of indiscriminate attacks and ignoring the plight of civilians in harm’s way. In Rafah, near the Egyptian border, three Palestinians were killed Thursday in an Israeli attack, medics said. Three other people were killed in separate airstrikes in the eastern Gaza city of Shezia, they added.

Israel launched an offensive in Gaza after Hamas-led militants attacked Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli estimates.

Since then, it has ravaged much of the Gaza Strip, forcing nearly the entire 2.3 million population from their homes. Officials in the Hamas-run territory say more than 44,500 Gazans have been killed and thousands more are feared dead in the rubble.

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