Shafaq News – Gaza / Ramallah
At least 51 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip in the past few hours, including eight since dawn on Thursday, Palestinian media reported, as famine worsens and aid groups warn there is “no safe place in Gaza.”
Al-Awda Hospital in al-Nuseirat confirmed it had received five bodies, including a woman and a child, together with 17 injured, among them three children, after Israeli strikes targeted aid distribution points and other gatherings in central Gaza.
In Khan Younis, an Israeli airstrike killed freed prisoner Mahmoud Youssef Abu Taha, who had been released in 2022 after six years in Israeli detention.
According to the Health Ministry, Israel’s military campaign since October 7, 2023, has left 62,895 Palestinians dead and 158,927 wounded. The toll includes more than 2,000 people killed and at least 15,000 injured while seeking food, with famine and malnutrition causing 313 deaths, including 119 children.
Starvation as a Weapon
Save the Children’s CEO Inger Ashing warned that children in Gaza are “systematically being starved to death,” describing the crisis as a deliberate policy and “starvation as a method of war in its starkest terms.”
Meanwhile, UNRWA underscored that “no place is safe in Gaza,” noting that nearly 700 days into the conflict, hospitals, schools, shelters, and homes have been bombed repeatedly, while hunger threatens people with either “a slow & silent death” or death while searching for food.
“People are hungry and exhausted. This must stop.”
Escalation in the West Bank
In the West Bank, Israeli settlers opened fire on al-Tayba village and released livestock onto Palestinian farmland in Masafer Yatta. They also harassed the Soufan family in Burin, blocking access to their home with stones, and in Kafr Malik, assaulted shepherds and stole around 300 sheep. Israeli forces, meanwhile, arrested a man in Dura and shot a young man in the foot during a raid on al-Ubeidiya, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Since the Gaza war began, Israeli operations in the West Bank have killed more than 900 Palestinians and injured over 7,000.