GAZA: Zionist gunfire and strikes killed at least 140 people across Gaza in the past 24 hours, local health officials said, as some Palestinians in the Strip said their plight was being forgotten as attention has shifted to the air war between Zionist entity and Iran. At least 40 of those killed over the past day died as a result of Zionist gunfire and airstrikes on Wednesday, Gaza’s health ministry said. The deaths included the latest in near daily killings of Palestinians seeking aid in the three weeks since the Zionist entity partially lifted a total blockade on the territory.
Medics said separate airstrikes on homes in the Maghazi refugee camp, the Zeitoun neighborhood and Gaza City killed at least 21 people, while five others were killed in an airstrike on an encampment in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. Fourteen more people were killed in Zionist fire at crowds of Palestinians awaiting aid trucks brought in by the United Nations along the Salahuddin road in central Gaza, medics said.
On Tuesday, Gaza’s health ministry said 397 Palestinians among those trying to get food aid had been killed and more than 3,000 wounded since aid deliveries restarted in late May.
Some in Gaza expressed concern that the latest escalations in the war between the Zionist entity and Hamas that began in Oct 2023 would be overlooked due to the new Zionist-Iran conflict.
“People are being slaughtered in Gaza, day and night, but attention has shifted to the Iran-(Zionist) war. There is little news about Gaza these days,” said Adel, a resident of Gaza City. “Whoever doesn’t die from (Zionist) bombs dies from hunger. People risk their lives every day to get food, and they also get killed and their blood smears the sacks of flour they thought they had won,” he told Reuters.
The Zionist entity is now channeling much of the aid into Gaza through a new US- and Zionist-backed group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which uses private US security and logistics firms and operates a handful of distribution sites in areas guarded by Zionist forces. Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, called the current system for distributing aid “a disgrace & a stain on our collective consciousness”, in a post on X on Wednesday.
The World Food Program called on Wednesday for a big increase in food distribution in Gaza, saying that the 9,000 metric tons it had dispatched over the last four weeks inside Gaza represented a “tiny fraction” of what was needed. “The fear of starvation and desperate need for food is causing large crowds to gather along well-known transport routes, hoping to intercept and access humanitarian supplies while in transit,” the WFP said in a statement. “Any violence resulting in starving people being killed or injured while seeking life-saving assistance is completely unacceptable,” it added.
Palestinians in Gaza have been closely following the Zionist entity’s air war with Iran, long a major supporter of Hamas. “We are maybe happy to see (the Zionist entity) suffer from Iranian rockets, but at the end of the day, one more day in this war costs the lives of tens of innocent people,” said 47-year-old Shaban Abed, a father of five from northern Gaza. “We just hope that a comprehensive solution could be reached to end the war in Gaza, too. We are being forgotten.”
Meanwhile, Zionist troops raided two Palestinian refugee camps in the occupied West Bank’s north overnight. The military told AFP that at “around 4:00 am (Zionist) forces entered Balata camp”, near the northern city of Nablus. It added that the troops had been deployed to the nearby Askar camp prior to the operation in Balata camp.
Imad Zaki, head of the popular services committee of Balata camp, also told AFP that the military began its raid at 4:00 am on Wednesday. “They closed all entrances to the camp, seized several homes after evicting their residents, and ordered the homeowners not to return for 72 hours. These homes were turned into military outposts and interrogation centers,” Zaki said.
“The soldiers are conducting house-to-house and neighborhood-to-neighborhood searches, destroying the contents of homes and physically assaulting the residents,” Zaki told AFP. He added that life had been “largely paralyzed” for the camp’s residents but that no injuries were reported. – Agencies