Monday, May 26, 2025

GENOCIDE
Rescuers say 9 children of Gaza doctor couple killed in Israeli strike

ZIONISTS MURDER THE NEXT GENERATION OF PALESTINIANS


By AFP
May 24, 2025


Palestinians gather at a food kitchen in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. - Copyright AFP Eyad BABA


AFP team in Gaza

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Saturday that an Israeli strike in the southern city of Khan Yunis killed nine children of a pair of married doctors, with the Israeli army saying it was reviewing the reports.

Israel has stepped up its campaign in Gaza in recent days, drawing international criticism as well as calls to allow in more supplies after it partially eased a total blockade on aid imposed on March 2.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the agency had retrieved “the bodies of nine child martyrs, some of them charred, from the home of Dr Hamdi al-Najjar and his wife, Dr Alaa al-Najjar, all of whom were their children”.

He added that Hamdi al-Najjar and another son, Adam, were also seriously wounded in the strike on Friday.

A medical source at Nasser Hospital, where Alaa al-Najjar works, gave Adam’s age as 10 years old.

Footage of the aftermath released by the civil defence agency showed rescuers recovering badly burned remains from the damaged home.

Asked about the incident, the Israeli military said it had “struck a number of suspects who were identified operating from a structure” near its troops.

“The Khan Yunis area is a dangerous warzone,” it added.

“The claim regarding harm to uninvolved civilians is under review.”

The army had issued an evacuation warning for the city on Monday.

The children’s funeral took place at Nasser Hospital, AFP footage showed.

Muneer Alboursh, director general of the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, said on X that the strike happened shortly after Hamdi Al-Najjar returned home from driving his wife to work.

“This is the reality our medical staff in Gaza endure. Words fall short in describing the pain,” he said, accusing Israel of “wiping out entire families”.



– Fresh strikes –



Bassal told AFP that Israeli strikes killed at least 15 people on Saturday across Gaza.

He said the dead included a couple who were killed with their two young children in a pre-dawn strike on a house in the Amal quarter of Khan Yunis.

To the west of the city, at least five people were killed by a drone strike on a crowd of people that had gathered to wait for aid trucks, he added.

At Nasser Hospital, tearful mourners gathered Saturday around white-shrouded bodies outside.

“Suddenly, a missile from an F-16 destroyed the entire house, and all of them were civilians — my sister, her husband and their children,” said Wissam Al-Madhoun.

“We found them lying in the street. What did this child do to (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu?”

In a statement, the military said that over the past day the air force had struck more than 100 targets across the territory.

Israel resumed operations in Gaza on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire.

Gaza’s health ministry said Saturday that at least 3,747 people had been killed in the territory since then, taking the war’s overall toll to 53,901, mostly civilians.



– ‘Cruellest phase’ –



Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Militants also took 251 hostages, 57 of whom remain in Gaza including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said on Friday that Palestinians were enduring “the cruellest phase” of the war in Gaza, where Israel’s lengthy blockade has led to widespread shortages of food and medicine.

Limited aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip restarted on Monday for the first time since March 2.

The World Food Programme said that 15 of its trucks were looted late Friday night, calling on Israel “to get far greater volumes of food assistance into Gaza faster”.

“Hunger, desperation and anxiety over whether more food aid is coming, is contributing to rising insecurity,” it said.

The Gaza City municipality, meanwhile, warned Saturday of “a potential large-scale water crisis” due to a lack of supplies needed for urgent repairs.

It said damage from the war had “affected the majority of Gaza’s water infrastructure, leaving large portions of the population vulnerable to severe water shortages”.

It added that temperatures were rising and demand was expected to increase.


Israeli Strike on Gaza Home Kills at Least 50 Palestinians

Most of the victims are reportedly women and children, including a 1-month-old infant.



A Palestinian boy weeps as the lifeless body of a 1-month-old Palestinian baby is pulled from the rubble of the Dardouna family home in Jabalia al-Balad, Gaza, Palestine following an Israeli airstrike on May 22, 2025.
(Photo: Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini/Anadolu via Getty Images)


Brett Wilkins
May 23, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

Gaza officials said Friday that an Israel Defense Forces airstrike targeting a home in the northern part of the Palestinian enclave killed at least 50 people, mostly women and children, while separate IDF strikes killed aid workers and other civilians, and deadly starvation continued.

Local and international media including Al Jazeerareported 50 or more people were massacred when the IDF bombed the home of the Dardouna family in the northern city of Jabalia al-Balad late on Thursday. Victims reportedly include a 1-month-old infant and Dr. Ibrahim Dardouna, a physician at the Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli Baptist hospitals, both of which have been severely damaged by Israeli bombing and other attacks.

Drop Site Newsreported that people who survived the initial bombing but were buried beneath the ruins of the four-story home could be heard pleading for help. Neighbors and other first responders desperately dug through the rubble with their bare hands, as Israeli occupation forces have blocked most heavy equipment from entering Gaza and bombed bulldozers and other vehicles already in the strip.

Warning: The following video contains images of death.



Medical sources told Al Jazeera that a total of 84 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli strikes in recent hours. Victims include six aid workers reportedly slain in an IDF strike in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza.

"These individuals were performing purely humanitarian duties by securing two trucks carrying vital medicines and medical supplies for the health sector, to ensure their delivery to hospitals in devastated areas," Gaza's Government Media Office (GMO) said in a statement reported by Middle East Monitor.

"Targeting them is a full-fledged crime that exposes the true intent of the occupation to disrupt the flow of humanitarian and medical aid and to create chaos and insecurity in line with its plan to starve the population and deny treatment to the sick," GMO added.

On Thursday, Palestinian officials said that more than 300 people have died from malnutrition and lack of medicine caused by Israel's bombing and siege. Israel's blockade was tightened in March at the start of an intensified offensive that has killed or wounded more than 13,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Since October 7, 2023—when Israel launched its assault in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack in which more than 1,100 Israelis and others were killed and upward of 250 others were kidnapped—Israeli forces have killed at least 53,822 Palestinians in Gaza, while wounding over 122,000 others. More than 14,000 Gazans are also missing and feared dead and buried beneath rubble.

Israel's conduct in the 595-day war is under investigation by the International Court of Justice as a possible genocide. The ICJ has issued three provisional orders for Israel to stop attacking Gaza and allow entry of humanitarian aid into the strip. Critics accuse Israel of ignoring all three orders.

Almost all of Gaza's more than 2 million people have been forcibly displaced, often multiple times, by invading Israeli forces. IDF troops are currently waging Operation Gideon's Chariots, an effort to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse large swaths of Gaza. Members of fugitive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Cabinet, the Israeli Knesset, and others have advocated the ethnic cleansing and Jewish recolonization of Gaza.

The latest Israeli attacks came as Steve Witkoff, U.S. President Donald Trump's Middle East envoy, claimed Friday that "great progress" is being made toward a new cease-fire agreement and the release of the 23 hostages still being held by Hamas. Israel unilaterally abrogated a January cease-fire in March.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Friday that "Palestinians in Gaza are enduring what may be the cruelest phase of this cruel conflict," while chiding the international community for "watching in real time" asr "families are being starved."

Officials in some of Israel's allied countries including the United States have grown increasingly frustrated at Israel's refusal to allow more than a trickle of aid to enter Gaza.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Thursday denounced the recent IDF strikes on Gaza as "unjustifiable and unacceptable" and urged Israel to stop bombing so that food and other humanitarian aid can reach those who need it.

On Friday, Germany—which has been one of Israel's staunchest supporters—reiterated its opposition to Trump's plan to forcibly expel up to 1 million Palestinians from Gaza and send them to Libya.

"The German government's position on this is very clear," German Foreign Ministry spokesperson Christian Wagner told reporters in Berlin. "There must be no expulsion, direct or indirect, of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. I have also explained this very clearly to our Israeli partners and friends during my visit, and this is the basis of our future policy."

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