ISRAELI attacks across Gaza since dawn have killed at least 52 people, including 32 in Gaza City. Israeli PM Netanyahu says that troops will soon move into the city, threatening residents and ordering them to flee for their lives.
Six people have been killed and many wounded in a shooting in occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli officials say, blaming the attack on two Palestinians from the occupied West Bank. Police say the perpetrators have been killed.
Israeli forces are carrying out violent raids in the West Bank in the wake of the shooting, killing two 14-year-old boys in Jenin and wounding many others with live ammunition.
Meanwhile, The Palestinian group, Hamas, says in a statement that the Israeli PM’s boasting about the continued destruction of residential high-rise buildings in Gaza City, most recently the al-Salam tower, as we reported earlier, represents “one of the most heinous images of sadism and criminality”.
“When the terrorist Netanyahu addresses the people of Gaza City, saying, ‘We warned you, so leave from there’, he is openly engaging in a fully-fledged crime of forced displacement carried out under the pressure of bombing, massacres, starvation, and threats of murder”, the statement reads.
As we reported earlier, Netanyahu issued a direct threat to the people of Gaza City, telling them to “leave now” ahead of the arrival of Israeli ground troops.
Forcible transfer or deportation of populations is considered a war crime under the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, unless strictly justified by necessity.
Israel has made it no secret that it intends to displace the entire population of Gaza City south.
Also, Israel struck the vicinity of Syria’s central Homs city, the coastal city of Latakia and the historic city of Palmyra, Syrian state-affiliated media says.
The report did not elaborate further on the size or the impact of the reported strikes.
Israel has, for years, waged a campaign of aerial bombardment that destroyed much of the country’s military infrastructure and this ramped up since the Israeli war in Gaza.
Israel and Syria have recently engaged in US-mediated talks on de-escalating the conflict in southern Syria.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 64,522 people and wounded 163,096 since October 2023. Thousands more are believed to be under the rubble. A total of 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7 attacks, and about 200 were taken captive.