Israeli air strike kills 29, including children
GAZA: Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 29 people on Friday in the Palestinian territory, devastated by war and under a total Israeli aid blockade for two months.
Israel resumed its military campaign in the Gaza Strip on March 18 after the collapse of a ceasefire that had largely halted the fighting.
Nine people were killed when an Israeli air strike hit a home in Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, civil defence official Mohammed al Mughayyir said.
Another six people were killed in a separate strike targeting the Al Masri family home in the northern city of Beit Lahia, he added.
In Gaza City, a strike on a community kitchen claimed the lives of six more, the civil defence agency reported.
Elsewhere across the Gaza Strip, at least eight additional fatalities were reported in similar attacks, the agency said.
Since Israel resumed its campaign in Gaza, at least 2,326 people have been killed, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,418, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
The United Nations has repeatedly warned of the humanitarian catastrophe on the ground, with famine again looming.
On Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross warned that the humanitarian response in Gaza was on the "verge of total collapse".
"This situation must not — and cannot — be allowed to escalate further," Pascal Hundt, ICRC Deputy Director of Operations said in a statement.
A youth draped in a blanket looks on as people look for survivors in the rubble of a building hit in an Israeli strike in the Bureij camp for Palestinian refugees in the central Gaza Strip on Friday. — AFP
Meanwhile, Reuters said that a ship bound for Gaza carrying humanitarian aid and activists was bombed by drones in international waters off Malta early on Friday, its organisers said, alleging that Israel was to blame.
The Israeli foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the allegation by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, an international non-governmental group.
The Maltese government said the vessel and its crew were secured in the early hours of the morning after a nearby tug assisted with firefighting operations.
Türkiye's foreign ministry said Turkish nationals were on board at the time of the incident and it was working with Maltese authorities to transfer them to a safe location.
"We condemn in the strongest terms this attack on a civilian ship," it said, noting that there were "allegations that the ship was targeted by Israeli drones".
"All necessary efforts will be made to reveal the details of the attack as soon as possible and to bring the perpetrators to justice," it said.
Swedish activist Greta Thunberg said she was in Malta and had been supposed to board the ship as part of the Freedom Flotilla's planned action in support of Gaza, which is under blockade and bombardment by Israel.
BREAK THE BLOCKADE
A spokeswoman for the NGO, Caoimhe Butterly, said the attack took place as the ship was preparing for activists to board from another vessel. A transfer at sea had been planned rather than the ship going to harbour, for bureaucratic reasons, she said.
Thunberg said the attack had "caused an explosion and major damage to the vessel, which made it impossible to continue the mission".
"I was part of the group who was supposed to board that boat today to continue the voyage towards Gaza, which is one of many attempts to open up a humanitarian corridor and to do our part to keep trying to break Israel's illegal siege on Gaza," she said in a Zoom interview.
Thunberg and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition said there were 30 people on board, not 16 as the Maltese government said.
The coalition said it had been organising a non-violent action under a media blackout in order to avoid any potential sabotage.
The Gaza war started after Hamas-led fighters killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages to Gaza in the October 7, 2023 attacks, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel's offensive on the enclave killed more than 52,000, according to Palestinian health officials.
Since March 2, Israel has completely cut off all supplies to the 2.3 million residents of the enclave and food stockpiled during a ceasefire at the start of the year has all but run out, according to international aid agencies. — Agencies
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