DEIR AL-BALAH (GAZA STRIP) — Israeli airstrikes pounded northern and
southern Gaza on Wednesday, killing at least 70 people, including almost two
dozen children, according to local hospitals and health officials, a day after
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there was “no way” he would halt
Israel's offensive in the Palestinian territory before Hamas is defeated.
At least 50 people, including 22 children, were killed in
strikes around Jabaliya in northern Gaza alone, according to hospitals and
Gaza's Health Ministry.
The strikes came after Hamas on Monday released an
Israeli-American hostage, a gesture that some thought could lay the groundwork
for a ceasefire, and as US President Donald Trump visited Saudi Arabia during a
multi-day trip to Gulf countries.
Israel's military refused to comment on the strikes. It
warned Jabaliya residents to evacuate late Tuesday, citing militant
infrastructure in the area, including rocket launchers.
In Jabaliya, rescue workers smashed through collapsed
concrete slabs using hand tools, lit by the light of cellphones, to remove
children's bodies.
Israel threatens
to escalate operations in Gaza
In comments released by Netanyahu's office Tuesday, the
prime minister said Israeli forces were days away from a promised escalation of
force and would enter Gaza “with great strength to complete the mission ... It
means destroying Hamas.”
There had been widespread hope that Trump's visit to the
Middle East could usher in a ceasefire deal or renewal of humanitarian aid to
Gaza. An Israeli blockade of the territory is now in its third month.
The war began when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200
people in a 2023 intrusion into southern Israel. Israel's retaliatory offensive
has killed over 52,928 Palestinians, many of them women and children, according
to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not say how many were combatants. Almost
3,000 have been killed since Israel broke a ceasefire on March 18, the ministry
said.
Israel's offensive has obliterated vast swathes of Gaza's
urban landscape and displaced 90 per cent of the population, often multiple
times.
Israeli media reported that one target in a strike on a
hospital in Khan Younis on Tuesday was Mohammed Sinwar, younger brother of the
late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by Israeli forces last October.
The military would not comment beyond saying it had targeted a Hamas “command
and control center” which it said was located beneath the European Hospital.
Mohammed Sinwar is believed to be Hamas' top military
leader in Gaza. Israel has tried to assassinate him multiple times over the
past decades.
A senior health official in Gaza said Wednesday that
ambulances were no longer able to reach the hospital due to damage from the
strike, which had also forced the facility to suspend surgical operations.
Dr. Marwan al-Hams, director general of Field Hospitals
at Gaza's Health Ministry, said the strike had severely damaged the hospital's
water and sewage systems, as well as its courtyard. He added that the Israeli
military hit a bulldozer brought in by hospital authorities to repair the area
to allow ambulances reach the building.
“Until these damages are fixed, we will have to shut down
most departments of the hospital,” he said, adding that he had no information
about Israel's claimed target of the strike.
France condemns
Israeli blockade of aid
International food security experts warned earlier this
week that Gaza will likely fall into famine if Israel doesn't lift its blockade
and stop its military campaign.
Nearly half a million Palestinians are facing possible
starvation while 1 million others can barely get enough food, according to
findings by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a leading international
authority on the severity of hunger crises.
French President Emmanuel Macron strongly denounced
Netanyahu's decision to block aid as “a disgrace” that has caused a major
humanitarian crisis.
“I say it forcefully, what Benjamin Netanyahu's government
is doing today is unacceptable,” Macron said Tuesday evening on TF1 national
television. “There's no medicine. We can't get the wounded out. Doctors can't
get in."
Macron, who visited injured Palestinians in Egypt last
month, called for the reopening of the Gaza border to humanitarian convoys.
“Then, yes, we must fight to demilitarize Hamas, free the hostages and build a
political solution,” he said.
Netanyahu retorted that Macron was “echoing the false
propaganda” of an extremist militant organisation.
Gaza's population of around 2.3 million people relies
almost entirely on outside aid to survive. Israel's 19-month-old military
campaign has wiped away most capacity to produce food in the territory. Markets
are empty of most items, and prices for what remains have skyrocketed.
Blockades force
charity kitchens to close
The United Nations says the number of meals that charity
kitchens are providing in Gaza has plunged to around 260,000 under Israel's
blockade, down from more than 1 million a day in late April.
Charity kitchens are the last lifeline for most of Gaza's
population, but they are rapidly shutting down because supplies are running
out. In the first two weeks of May, at least 112 kitchens – more than 60 per
cen of the total – closed, the UN humanitarian office said Wednesday. Only 68
kitchens still operate.
The World Health Organisation said it has only enough
stocks to treat 500 children with acute malnutrition, a fraction of the need.
Thousands of children have been diagnosed with malnutrition in recent weeks.
Israel says the blockade is aimed at pressuring Hamas to
release remaining hostages and disarm. Israeli officials have asserted there is
enough food in the territory after a surge in aid entered during the recent
two-month ceasefire.
