Gaza: Israeli forces again open fire on Palestinians waiting for food aid in Gaza City, killing at least six and wounding more than 80 others.
The attack came hours after Israel bombed a UN food distribution centre in southern Rafah city, killing at least five people, including an UNRWA staff member.
Israel’s bombardment and ground offensive have killed at least 31,272 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry. It said at least 88 people were killed over the past 24 hours, adding that “dozens of missing persons are still under the rubble”.
The Israeli army said its troops were “intensifying operations” in the southern Gaza Strip, including the biggest city there, Khan Yunis.
Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinian men at a hospital in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, an official said.
The killings before dawn took place on the compound of the government hospital in Jenin, in the north of the West Bank, the hospital’s director, Wissam Bakr, told AFP. “It is true that shots were fired at a group of young men” near the entrance to the emergency department, “and there were no confrontations or anything,” he said.
Weeks of talks involving US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators had aimed to bring a truce and prisoner exchange deal before the start of Ramazan, but missed the Monday deadline.
Just a day ago, Qatari foreign ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said that although talks continued, “we are not near a deal”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in remarks to Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, “emphasised…that entering Rafah is essential to realising the goals of the war, and that unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state would be considered an achievement by Hamas”.
The prospect of a Rafah invasion has sparked global alarm because it is crowded with almost 1.5 million mostly displaced people.