GAZA: For the second time in less than 48 hours, Israeli occupation forces opened machine gunfire this evening targeting hundreds of civilians waiting for desperately needed humanitarian aid southwest of Gaza City, resulting in multiple civilian casualties.
Eyewitnesses reported that the occupation forces opened fire on a crowd of civilians waiting for the potential arrival of aid trucks near the Al-Nablusi roundabout at the Al-Rashid Street southwest of Gaza City, resulting in at least one fatality and the injury of 26 others.
On Thursday morning, Israeli occupation forces and tanks opened fire on thousands of civilians at the same location as they were waiting the arrival of trucks loaded with humanitarian aid. The bloody assault resulted in the killing of 117 civilians and the injury of hundreds. The massacre sparked angry international reactions.
The developments come as Israeli occupation authorities continue to block the arrival of badly needed humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, especially the nor
thern region, where a real famine has been taking a heavy toll on the local population, with no food, no water, no electricity, and nothing of the basics of life.
The aid reaching the southern areas of the Strip is times below the minimum requirements of the population there, particularly in Rafah, where more than 1.3 million Palestinians, the majority of whom are displaced people, are overcrowded.
Humanitarian workers at the United Nations warned during a session of the UN Security Council last Tuesday that more than half a million residents of the Gaza Strip are “one step away from famine.”
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) also warned that the alarming shortage of food, increasing malnutrition, and diseases could lead to an “explosion” in child deaths in Gaza.
One out of every six children under the age of two in Gaza suffers from acute malnutrition, according to estimates by UNICEF published on February 19.
The toll of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip since October 7th has risen to
30,320 fatalities, 71,533 injured, in addition to thousands missing under the rubble, according to the latest figures of the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
Source: Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA