Palestinians mourn their relatives who were killed in the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip in Rafah, Saturday, January 13, 2024.
Fatima Shabir/AFP
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Fatima Shabir/AFP
Palestinians mourn their relatives who were killed in the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip in Rafah, Saturday, January 13, 2024.
Fatima Shabir/AFP
RAFAH, Gaza Strip — More than 30 Palestinians, including young children, were killed in two Israeli air strikes Saturday night in the Gaza Strip, officials said, as concerns continued to grow about shortages of fuel and supplies for overburdened hospitals.
A video provided by the Gaza Civil Defense Department showed rescue workers searching through the rubble of a house in Gaza City with a flashlight early Saturday morning after it came under an Israeli attack.
The footage showed them carrying a young girl wrapped in blankets with injuries to her face, and at least two other children who appeared to be dead. A boy covered in dust winced as he was loaded into an ambulance.
The attack on the house located in the Daraj neighborhood led to the killing of at least 20 people, according to Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal.
Another attack near the southern city of Rafah on the Egyptian border killed at least 13 people, including two children. The bodies of the dead, most of whom were members of a displaced family from central Gaza, were transported to the city's Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital, where they were seen by an Associated Press reporter.
The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said on Saturday that 135 Palestinians were killed in the past 24 hours, bringing the total death toll in the war to 23,843. The number does not differentiate between combatants and civilians, but the ministry said that about two-thirds of those killed were women and children. The ministry said that the total number of war-wounded exceeded 60,000.
Israel says Hamas is responsible for the large number of civilian casualties, saying its fighters are using civilian buildings and launching attacks from densely populated urban areas.
As the war in Gaza entered its 100th day on Sunday, the World Health Organization said only 15 of the Strip's 36 hospitals remained partially operational, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The main hospital in central Gaza, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the city of Deir Al-Balah, entered darkness on Friday morning after running out of fuel.
Staff were able to keep ventilators and incubators running on solar-charged batteries during the day, and received a small emergency shipment of fuel from another hospital late Friday.
Hospital officials said they were expected to run out of fuel again on Saturday unless the World Health Organization could deliver the promised shipment. Aid deliveries were disrupted by a renewed decline in telecommunications in much of Gaza, which began late Friday.
In the October 7 attack that sparked the war, Hamas and other activists killed about 1,200 people in Israel, most of them civilians. About 250 others were taken hostage, and while some have been released or confirmed dead, more than half are believed to remain in captivity.
Since the start of the Israeli ground operation in late October, 186 Israeli soldiers have been killed and 1,099 others wounded in Gaza, according to the army. More than 85% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million have been displaced as a result of Israel's air and ground offensive, and vast tracts of land have been flattened.
Recent developments, including US and British military strikes on Houthi-controlled sites in Yemen, have raised growing fears of the war expanding into a regional conflict.
The strikes were in response to a campaign launched by the Houthis with drones and missile attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea, which they said were a response to the Israeli attack on Gaza.
With already severe shortages of food, clean water and fuel in Gaza, OCHA said in its daily report that Israel's severe restrictions on and outright rejection of humanitarian missions have increased since the beginning of the year.
The agency said that only 21% of scheduled shipments of food, medicine, water and other supplies successfully reached northern Gaza.
“This denial paralyzes the ability of humanitarian partners to respond meaningfully, coherently and at scale to wide-ranging humanitarian needs,” the agency said.
American and other international efforts to push Israel to do more to alleviate the suffering of Palestinian civilians have met with only limited success.
Meanwhile, Gaza City's Shifa Hospital, the Strip's main hospital, which has been closed since November, has begun partially functioning again, the World Health Organization said on Friday.
Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus said his organization had delivered 9,300 liters (2,460 gallons) of fuel to Shifa, allowing a 60-person medical team to begin treating more than 1,000 patients.
The lack of adequate humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza forms part of South Africa's case opened this week at the International Court of Justice in The Hague in which Israel is accused of committing genocide.
South Africa says in its complaint that Israel has failed to ensure that the medical needs of the Palestinians are met, and accuses Israel of “directly attacking Palestinian hospitals, ambulances and other health care facilities in Gaza.”
As the case began on Thursday, South Africa called for the implementation of wide-ranging interim measures, including asking the court to immediately order Israel to halt its attack and provide access to “adequate fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and disinfection” as well as the provision of food and medicine. Medical supplies and assistance.
The Israeli legal team accused Hamas of using hospitals and other civilian facilities to launch attacks and shelter its fighters. Israel said it was doing everything it could to protect civilians, and that it was working with hospitals to provide assistance. Israel called for the South African case to be dropped.
It was not immediately clear when a decision would be reached.
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