Gaza: At least 31 Palestinians have been killed in a new wave of Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, compounding the suffering in a territory already pushed to the brink of famine by a strict Israeli blockade that has lasted more than two months.
On Wednesday, a strike on al-Karama School in the Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City claimed 13 lives, adding to a grim toll from scattered attacks throughout the enclave. In the north, a strike on a house in Jabalia left three people dead and several others wounded. In the south, eight members of a family — including a father, his children, and cousins — were killed in Khan Younis, with five of them dying in a single home.
In Deir el-Balah, a tent shelter was hit, killing three people, including a child, while in Bani Suheila, a village in the eastern part of Gaza, a husband and wife were also killed when their house was struck.
The intensified bombardment followed a deadly attack the previous night on a United Nations school sheltering displaced people in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, where 31 more fatalities were reported by Gaza’s civil defence agency. This spike in violence is occurring against a backdrop of worsening humanitarian conditions due to Israel’s blockade of fuel and food supplies since March 2.
Aid organizations report near-total depletion of food, with flour becoming increasingly scarce and only bread left in some shelters. A mother of six at a UNRWA shelter stated they had no food left at all, underscoring the severity of the crisis.
The agency issued an urgent appeal on X (formerly Twitter), demanding that Israel lift the siege and calling for immediate international intervention to prevent an even greater catastrophe.
The Gaza health sector is collapsing under the pressure, with hospitals operating at 88 percent capacity and suffering from a lack of medical supplies and disposables. Meanwhile, regional ceasefire efforts are ongoing.
On Wednesday, Egypt and Qatar, in collaboration with the United States, reaffirmed their joint commitment to brokering a comprehensive ceasefire. In a joint statement, the two countries condemned efforts to create division and emphasized their determination to end the war and its humanitarian consequences.
Despite this, Israel has warned of a new, intensified offensive in Gaza if no deal is reached. Hamas, however, dismissed further negotiations, saying they are meaningless while the “hunger war and extermination war” continue, according to a statement from senior official Basem Naim to AFP.
This latest escalation not only brings more loss of life but also deepens the suffering of civilians caught in one of the most densely populated and devastated areas in the world, where starvation is now being used as a weapon of war, according to critics and humanitarian agencies.
