Zionists massacre 94 Palestinians
GAZA/JERUSALEM: More than 94 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip and 252 others wounded in the last 24 hours as a result of the relentless campaign of massacre carried out by the Zionist occupation, said health authorities Strip on Wednesday.
At least 20 Palestinians were killed on Wednesday at an aid distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in what the US-backed group said was a crowd surge instigated by armed agitators. The GHF, which is supported by Zionist entity, said 19 people were trampled and one fatally stabbed during the crush at one of its centers in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
The Palestinian authorities confirmed that the number of casualties, saying that the tally of those killed and wounded in Gaza since the Zionist occupation assault began in October 2023 had reached 58,573 and 139,607 respectively. Those killed in the attempt to gather food and water from so-called 'humanitarian' distribution points had reached 851, while 5,634 were injured, it added.
'We have credible reason to believe that elements within the crowd – armed and affiliated with Hamas – deliberately fomented the unrest,' GHF said in a statement. Hamas rejected the GHF allegation as 'false and misleading', saying GHF guards and Zionist soldiers sprayed people with pepper gas and opened fire. Witnesses told Reuters that guards at the site sprayed pepper gas at them after they had locked the gates to the centre, trapping them between the gates and the outer wire-fence.
Palestinians search for items to salvage in the rubble of buildings destroyed by the strikes on July 16, 2025. -- AFP
'People kept gathering and pressuring each other; when people pushed each other...those who couldn't stand fell under the people and were crushed,' said eyewitness Mahmoud Fojo, 21, who was hurt in the stampede. 'Some people started jumping over the netted fence and got wounded. We were injured, and God saved us. We were under the people and we said the Shahada (death prayers). We thought we were dying, finished,' he added.
There was no immediate comment from the Zionist army on eyewitness accounts.
Palestinian health officials told Reuters that 21 people had died of suffocation at the site. One medic said lots of people had been crammed into a small space and had been crushed. On Tuesday, the UN rights office in Geneva said it had recorded at least 875 killings within the past six weeks in the vicinity of aid sites and food convoys in Gaza - the majority of them close to GHF distribution points.
Most of those deaths were caused by gunfire that locals have blamed on the Zionist military. The military has acknowledged that Palestinian civilians were harmed near aid distribution centers, saying that Zionist forces had been issued new instructions with 'lessons learned'. The UN has called the GHF's model unsafe and a breach of humanitarian impartiality standards - an allegation GHF has denied. Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGOs Network, accused the GHF on Wednesday of gross mismanagement.
'People who flock in their thousands (to GHF sites) are hungry and exhausted, and they get squeezed into narrow places, amid shortages of aid and the absence of organization and discipline by the GHF,' he told Reuters. Earlier on Wednesday, the Zionist military said it had finished paving a new road in southern Gaza separating several towns east of Khan Younis from the rest of the territory in an effort to disrupt Hamas operations. Palestinians see the road, which extends Zionist entity control, as a way to put pressure on Hamas in ongoing ceasefire talks, which started on July 6 and are being brokered by Arab mediators Egypt and Qatar with the backing of the United States. Palestinian sources close to the negotiations said a breakthrough had not yet been reached on any of the main issues.
Hamas said it rejected a Zionist demand to keep at least 40 percent of Gaza under its control as part of any deal. Hamas also demanded the dismantlement of the GHF and the reinstatement of a UN-led aid delivery mechanism. Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the war will end once Hamas is disarmed and removed from Gaza. – Agencies
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Kuwait Times
2 days ago
- Kuwait Times
Activist boat Handala seized off Gaza brought to port of Ashdod
Activist boat Handala seized off Gaza brought to port of Ashdod Activists were on a peaceful mission to break through Zionists' illegal blockade on Gaza TEL AVIV: Zionist forces brought the pro-Palestinian activist boat Handala into the port of Ashdod on Sunday, after seizing the vessel in international waters and detaining the crew, an AFP journalist saw. Campaigners from the Freedom Flotilla Coalition had attempted to breach a Zionist naval blockade of the Palestinian territory of Gaza, but were intercepted late Saturday. The legal rights center Adalah told AFP its lawyers were in Ashdod and had been allowed to speak to 19 members of the 21-strong international crew, which included two French parliamentarians and two Al-Jazeera journalists. The remaining two of those detained were dual US and Zionist citizens and had been transferred to police custody, Adalah said. 'After 12 hours at sea, following the unlawful interception of the Handala, Zionist authorities confirmed the vessel's arrival at Ashdod port,' said the group, set up to campaign for the rights of Zionist entity's Arab population. 'Adalah reiterates that the activists aboard the Handala were part of a peaceful civilian mission to break through Zionist entity's illegal blockade on Gaza. The vessel was intercepted in international waters and their detention constitutes a clear violation of international law.' Earlier, the Zionist foreign ministry said the navy stopped the Handala to prevent it from entering the coastal waters off the territory of Gaza. 'The vessel is safely making its way to the shores of Zionist entity. All passengers are safe,' it said. Just before midnight local time on Saturday, video streamed live from the Handala showed Zionist troops boarding the vessel. An online tracker showed the ship in international waters west of Gaza. The ship had been on course to try to break a Zionist naval blockade of Gaza and bring a small quantity of humanitarian aid to the territory's Palestinian residents. The Handala's crew had said before their capture in a post on X that they would go on a hunger strike if the Zionist army intercepted the boat and detained its passengers. On board were activists from 10 countries, including two French MPs from the left-wing France Unbowed party, Emma Fourreau and Gabrielle Cathala. There are also American, European and Arab activists among those detained. A previous boat sent by Freedom Flotilla, the Madleen, was also intercepted by the Zionist military in international waters on June 9 and towed to Ashdod. It carried 12 campaigners, including prominent Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. The activists were eventually expelled by Zionist entity. – AFP
Kuwait Times
3 days ago
- Kuwait Times
Lebanese militant back home after 40 years in French jail
KOBAYAT: Lebanese army soldiers stand guard as pro-Palestinian Lebanese militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, 74, prepares to give a press conference upon his arrival in his village of Kobayat in Lebanon's northern Akkar region on July 25, 2025, after serving more than 40 years in jail in France. – AFP KOBAYAT: One of France's longest-held inmates, the pro-Palestinian Lebanese militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, arrived in his hometown on Friday, having been released after more than 40 years behind bars for the killings of two diplomats. AFP journalists saw a convoy leaving the Lannemezan prison in southwest France, and hours later, the 74-year-old was placed on a plane and deported back to Lebanon, to be welcomed by family members on his return to Beirut at the airport's VIP lounge. Back in his hometown of Kobayat, near the Syrian border in north Lebanon, hundreds of men, women and children gathered to welcome Abdallah. 'Whether or not we agree with his ideas... we first and foremost salute the man,' lawmaker Jimmy Jabbour, who is from the area, told AFP, hailing Abdallah's 'perseverance'. 'The whole village is happy that he's back... 41 years in prison, others would have probably lost their minds,' said Kobayat resident Claudette Tannous, 68. Earlier at Beirut airport, an AFP correspondent said dozens of supporters, some waving Palestinian or Lebanese Communist Party flags, gathered near the arrivals hall to give him a hero's reception. In his first public address after being released, Abdallah took aim at ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, where human rights organizations have warned of mass starvation. 'The children of Palestine are dying of hunger while millions of Arabs watch,' he said. 'Resistance must continue and intensify,' added the former schoolteacher. There was no official comment on his return from the Lebanese government. Abdallah was detained in 1984 and sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for his involvement in the murders of US military attache Charles Robert Ray and Zionist diplomat Yacov Barsimantov in Paris. 'Past symbol' The Paris Court of Appeal had ordered his release 'effective July 25' on the condition that he leave French territory and never return. While he had been eligible for release since 1999, his previous requests were denied with the United States—a civil party to the case—consistently opposing his leaving prison. Inmates serving life sentences in France are typically freed after fewer than 30 years. Abdallah's lawyer, Jean-Louis Chalanset, visited him for a final time on Thursday. 'He seemed very happy about his upcoming release, even though he knows he is returning to the Middle East in an extremely tough context for Lebanese and Palestinian populations,' Chalanset told AFP. The charge d'affaires of the Lebanese Embassy in Paris, Ziad Taan, who saw Georges Abdallah before his departure, told AFP that he was 'well, in good health, very happy to return to Lebanon to his family and to regain his freedom'. AFP visited Abdallah last week after the court's release decision, accompanying a lawmaker to the detention center. The founder of the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Factions (FARL) - a long-disbanded Marxist anti-Zionist group—said for more than four decades he had continued to be a 'militant with a struggle'. After his arrest in 1984, French police discovered submachine guns and transceiver stations in one of his Paris apartments. The appeals court in February noted that the FARL 'had not committed a violent action since 1984' and that Abdallah 'today represented a past symbol of the Palestinian struggle'. The appeals judges also found the length of his detention 'disproportionate' to his crimes, and pointed to his age. — AFP
Kuwait Times
5 days ago
- Kuwait Times
Houthi cargo ship attacks amount to war crimes: HRW
HODEIDA: People displaced by conflict gather to top up their jerrycans with water drawn from a well at a makeshift camp in Hays, south of Hodeida in eastern Yemen.— AFP BEIRUT: Human Rights Watch on Wednesday condemned Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels for deadly attacks that sank two commercial vessels this month, calling them violations of the laws of war. The Houthis struck the Magic Seas and Eternity C cargo ships in the Red Sea, part of a campaign against maritime traffic they accuse of having links to Zionist entity, launched over the Gaza war. Fifteen people—including four confirmed dead—remain missing after the July 7 attack on the Eternity C. The Yemeni rebels claimed to have 'rescued' an unspecified number of crew, whose whereabouts are still unknown. The attacks were 'violations of the laws of war amounting to war crimes', Human Rights Watch said in a statement, adding it found 'no evidence that the ships were military targets'. 'They deliberately attacked commercial vessels that could clearly be identified as civilian,' the New York-based group said, adding that 'detaining rescued crew members is also prohibited'. Rebel leader Abdel Malek Al-Houthi justified the attacks, saying both ships belonged to companies serving Zionist ports. But HRW said the ships had no connection to Zionist entity and were not heading there. The Magic Seas was en route to Turkey from China carrying fertiliser and steel billets when it was attacked on July 6. The Eternity C was heading to Saudi Arabia from Somalia after delivering humanitarian aid for the United Nations World Food Programme. 'The Houthis have sought to justify unlawful attacks by pointing to Israeli violations against Palestinians,' said Niku Jafarnia, HRW's Yemen and Bahrain researcher. 'The Houthis should end all attacks on ships not taking part in the conflict and immediately release the crew members in their custody,' she added. Since November 2023, the rebels have carried out more than 100 attacks on vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, according to the Joint Maritime Information Centre, run by a Western naval coalition. HRW said it had previously found those actions to be war crimes.– AFP It also warned of environmental risks, citing findings by Wim Zwijnenburg of Dutch peace organization PAX. Zwijnenburg said satellite imagery showed large oil slicks trailing from the sites where both vessels sank, threatening wildlife in a protected nature reserve off Eritrea's coast. Oil was also reportedly washing ashore near a fishing community, he was quoted as saying. – AFP
