GAZA: Zionist forces killed at least 79 Palestinians and injured more than 289 others in Gaza and ordered new evacuations on Tuesday, local medics and residents said, in further bloodshed shortly after the Zionist entity and Iran agreed to a ceasefire in their air war. The Zionist-Iran deal announced by US President Donald Trump raised hopes among Palestinians of an end to over 20 months of war in Gaza that has widely demolished the territory and displaced most residents, with malnutrition widespread.
“Enough! The whole universe has let us down. (Lebanese group) Hezbollah reached a deal without Gaza, and now Iran has done the same,” said Adel Farouk, 62, from Gaza City. “We hope Gaza is next,” he told Reuters. In Gaza, deadly violence continued with little respite.
Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that 21 people were killed and around 150 wounded by Zionist fire near an aid point in central Gaza early Tuesday, and that another 25 were killed in a separate incident in south Gaza.
“Every day we face this scenario: Martyrs, injuries, in unbearable numbers,” paramedic Ziad Farhat told AFP at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. “Hospitals cannot accommodate the number of casualties arriving,” he said.
Marwan Abu Naser, of the Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat in central Gaza, said it had received 19 dead and 146 injured from crowds who tried to reach a nearby aid distribution center of the US and Zionist-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Abu Naser told Reuters the casualties resulted from gunfire. UN aid trucks entering Gaza also use area roads and Palestinians have in the past few days reported killings of people by Israeli fire as they waited at roadsides to grab bags of flour from the trucks.
The United Nations rejects the GHF delivery system as inadequate, dangerous, and a violation of humanitarian impartiality rules. Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations’ Palestinian aid agency UNRWA, told reporters in Berlin on Tuesday that the new mechanism was an “abomination” and “a death trap”, while a spokesman for the UN human rights office, Thameen Al-Kheetan, condemned the “weaponization of food” in Gaza. On Monday, more than a dozen human rights organizations called on GHF to cease its operations, warning of possible complicity in war crimes.
Separately, 10 other people were killed by a Zionist airstrike on a house in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City, while 11 were killed by Zionist gunfire in the southern city of Khan Yunis, medics said. Palestinians said they wished the Zionist-Iran ceasefire announced by Trump had applied to Gaza. Adding to their frustration, the Zionist military dropped leaflets over several areas in north Gaza ordering residents to leave their homes and head towards the south, in what appeared to herald renewed Zionist military strikes against Hamas. “Coming back to combat areas represents a risk to your lives,” the army statement said.
Bassal reported a first deadly shooting “with bullets and tank shells” near the Netzarim corridor in central Gaza where thousands of Palestinians gather each night for rations from a nearby GHF distribution point. Witness Ribhi Al-Qassas told AFP that troops had “opened fire randomly” at a crowd he estimated at 50,000 people. The second incident took place in south Gaza about two kilometers from another GHF center in Rafah governorate, Bassal said. “(Zionist) forces targeted civilian gatherings near Al-Alam and Al-Shakoush areas with bullets and tank shells”, he told AFP. – Agencies