A residential apartment in Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp was hit by an Israeli air raid on Monday and killed 14, mostly women and children, said health officials. Shifa and al-Ahli hospitals confirmed that five women and seven children were among the dead in the heavily populated northern Gaza sector.
The Israeli Defence Forces have yet to comment on the request. Israel insists its attacks are focused only on militants and makes every effort to spare civilians, blaming any casualty of civilians on Hamas for placing themselves in amongst civilian populations.
The Israel-Hamas conflict started on October 7, 2023, when Palestinian militants attacked Israel on a massive scale, killing about 1,200 individuals, who were primarily civilians, and took 251 people hostage. Hamas is holding 58 hostages at present, with roughly one-third of them estimated to be alive, as many others have been released under ceasefire deals or negotiations.
More than 54,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed by Israel’s military campaign since then, Gaza’s Health Ministry says, though it does not break out how many victims were combatants and how many were civilians. The large-scale offensive has ruined much of Gaza and displaced about 90% of its inhabitants.
Hamas has indicated that it will only free the remaining hostages in return for the release of additional Palestinian prisoners, a solid ceasefire, and the Israeli troop withdrawal.
Israel has promised to carry out its military actions until all the hostages are released and Hamas is defeated, disarmed, or displaced. It also wants to keep Gaza under its control forever, in favor of what it calls voluntary emigration by a majority of Gaza’s population.
These plans to resettle have been strongly criticized by the Palestinians and the rest of the international community, who perceive them as forced displacement.