Israel expands Gaza assault killing 103 Palestinians - War on Gaza

Al-Ahram Weekly

18-05-2025

The Israeli occupation army killed at least 103 Palestinians overnight into Sunday as it launched a new and deadlier phase of its war on Gaza, unleashing intensified airstrikes under a fresh military campaign.
Bombs rained through the night and into Sunday, targeting homes, tents, and shelters across Gaza's fragmented south and already-decimated north.
In Khan Younis alone, the occupation forces killed at least 48 people—many of them women and children sheltering in makeshift encampments, according to Nasser Hospital, cited by AP.
In the north, another 43 were reported dead. Hospitals in central Gaza confirmed 12 more killed in three separate attacks.
Among the bodies pulled from rubble in Gaza City's Shifa Hospital were 15 children and 12 women.In northern Gaza, at least 43 people were killed in multiple strikes, according to the health ministry and the civil defence in Gaza.
The death toll since 18 March, when Israel resumed the genocide, unilaterally ending a two-month ceasefire brokered by Egypt, Qatar, and the US, has now passed 3,100.
The overall Palestinian death toll since October has climbed to at least 53,272, according to Gaza's health ministry.
Al Jazeera reported five journalists among the martyred: Aziz Al-Hajjar, Abdel Rahman Al-Abadleh, Ahmed Al-Zainati, and married reporters Nour Qandil and Khaled Abu Saif, who were killed alongside several members of their families.
Since the outbreak of the genocide on 7 October 2023, the Israeli army killed more than 222 Palestinian journalists—figures unseen in any modern war.
Israel's army expansion of the offensive has drawn global condemnation and triggered a fresh wave of displacement, with thousands forced to flee again, many with nowhere left to go.
Gaza's health system, already hollowed out by months of war and siege, is now under siege itself.
On Sunday, the health ministry said Israeli forces had surrounded the Indonesian Hospital in the north, where "a state of panic and confusion is prevailing... severely hampering the provision of emergency medical care."
Days earlier, the European Hospital in the south was bombed out of service.
The siege first imposed by Israel on 2 March remains in place, sealing Gaza off from the outside world and leaving aid convoys stalled at the border.
The United Nations (UN) has warned that famine is no longer a risk but an inevitability.
The war, now in its eighteenth month, has rendered Gaza unlivable by nearly every humanitarian metric.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said at he was "alarmed" at Israel's military escalation during the Arab League summit in Baghdad, calling again for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.
Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called for an end to Israel's 'massacre' in Gaza and said Madrid would support a UN resolution requesting a legal ruling from the International Court of Justice on Israel's obstruction of humanitarian aid.
Italy urged an end to the strikes.
Germany expressed "deep concern".
European Council President António Costa said he was "shocked by the news from Gaza".
Yet, as bombs fell, talks resumed.
Senior Hamas official Taher al-Nunu confirmed that indirect negotiations restarted in Doha on Saturday 'without preconditions from either side'.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party said he remained in 'constant contact' with the Israeli delegation and had ordered it to stay in Qatar.
There is no breakthrough. But the process—however fragile—persists.
Follow us on:
Facebook
Instagram
Whatsapp
Short link: