ISRAEL has carried out a series of attacks on northern and central Gaza that killed at least 40 people, including children, as a leading rights group accused it of committing “acts of genocide” by denying clean water to Palestinians.
Separate Israeli attacks on Jabalia in northern Gaza, where Palestinians have remained under a tight siege for more than two months, killed at least 16 people, including 10 members of the same family, on Thursday.
In Gaza City, an Israeli attack on a home in the Daraj neighbourhood killed at least four Palestinians, with another person killed in a strike on a group of civilians in Zeitoun neighbourhood.
Another 15 people were killed and dozens more wounded in Israeli air attacks on two schools – the Dar al-Arqam and Shaaban al-Rayes schools – sheltering displaced people in Gaza City.
Medics in Gaza told Anadolu news agency that most of the victims were women and children, while witnesses said the strikes caused huge destruction to the schools and nearby residential buildings.
n central Gaza, a strike on Maghazi refugee camp killed at least four people.
There were fears the overall death toll would rise as many people were reported wounded in the Israeli attacks.
The Israeli military also issued forced evacuation threats to residents in Bureij refugee camp. “The question is where people can go, as everywhere is overcrowded in the central areas of the strip,” said Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from nearby Deir el-Balah.
At least 45,000 Palestinians have been killed and 107,000 others wounded in more than 14 months of attacks across Gaza, a densely populated territory that is at risk of famine and is experiencing emergency levels of hunger.
Israel began its ferocious military campaign after at least 1,139 people were killed during an attack led by Palestinian group Hamas in Israel on October 7, 2023, with more than 200 others taken captive.
Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants have been displaced, many of them multiple times, while Israel’s intense bombardment has left much of the territory in ruins.
Referring to a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday that accused Israel of using water as a weapon of war in Gaza, Abu Azzoum said searching for water in the besieged and bombarded territory was “a daily struggle for survival”.
