The latest series of Israeli attacks in a renewed military offensive in Gaza killed dozens of Palestinians, the Ministry of Health of the territory announced on Saturday.
The ministry said on Saturday afternoon that 92 dead and 219 injured had arrived in hospitals in the last 48 hours. Gaza health officials do not make the difference between civilians and combatants in the number of victims.
Since the collapse last month of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Israeli army has embarked on a large bombing campaign and has seized a territory in Gaza. Israeli officials said the soldiers were aiming for militants and arms infrastructure in order to force Hamas to release more hostages held in the enclave.
More than 1,700 people have been killed in Gaza since the ceasefire collapsed and more than 51,000 people have been killed since the start of the war in October 2023, according to the Ministry of Health.
Israel’s renewed offensive demanded a heavy price on civilians who find it difficult to find places to take shelter and have strengthened a feeling among the Palestinians in Gaza which is nowhere in safety.
On Friday, the Israeli army told the New York Times that Mawasi, a close bunch of coastal land in southern Gaza, was no longer considered a “humanitarian zone”. Earlier in the war, the Israeli army has repeatedly asked the Palestinians to go to Mawasi, which he had described at the time as a “humanitarian zone”.
A large number of Palestinians still live in the Mawasi region in a number of tent camps.
Since the ceasefire has broken down, Avichay Adraee, a spokesperson in the Arab language of the military, asked some Palestinians to go to shelters in Mawasi without describing the region as a “humanitarian zone”.
While many Palestinians from Gaza always have the impression that the region had special status, it is not clear if the Israeli army has ever informed them that it was no longer designated in humanitarian zone.
The Declaration of the Ministry of Health on Saturday did not specify where people were killed in the last series of bombing. But the Palestinian civil defense, an arm of the interior ministry managed by Hamas, said that it had recovered bodies in the north and south of Gaza in the last two days.
