Printed On 28 Aug 2025
No less than 50 folks have been killed in Israeli assaults throughout Gaza since daybreak on Thursday, together with 12 support seekers, medical sources advised Al Jazeera, as residents report intensified army bombardment of the japanese and southern neighbourhoods of Gaza Metropolis.
The Israeli army has been getting ready to take Gaza Metropolis, the enclave’s largest city centre, regardless of worldwide calls to rethink the transfer over fears that the operation would trigger vital casualties and displace the roughly a million Palestinians sheltering there.
United Nations Secretary-Normal Antonio Guterres was amongst these criticising the marketing campaign, saying on Thursday that it “alerts a brand new and harmful section” within the conflict.
“Expanded army operations in Gaza Metropolis may have devastating penalties. Lots of of 1000’s of civilians, already exhausted and traumatised, can be pressured to flee but once more, pushing households into even deeper peril,” he mentioned.
“This should cease,” he mentioned.
In Gaza Metropolis, residents mentioned households have been fleeing their houses and most have been heading in direction of the coast as Israeli forces bombarded the Shujayea, Zeitoun and Sabra neighbourhoods.
No buildings stay standing within the southern a part of Zeitoun because the Israeli floor operation has demolished greater than 1,500 houses, based on Gaza’s Civil Defence company.
Israeli officers have described Gaza Metropolis because the final stronghold of Hamas.
‘Enforced disappearances’
The Israeli army mentioned in a press release that it was persevering with to function all through Gaza to focus on fighters and their infrastructure.
The army mentioned on Thursday that it had killed three fighters prior to now day with out saying the way it had recognized the people.
The Palestinian information company Wafa reported that these killed throughout Gaza on Thursday included a girl and her little one sheltering in a tent camp for displaced folks in Khan Younis.
In the meantime, UN rights specialists voiced alarm at reviews of “enforced disappearances” of ravenous Palestinians in search of meals at distribution websites run by the US- and Israeli-backed GHF, urging Israel to finish the “heinous crime”.
The seven impartial specialists mentioned in a joint assertion they’d obtained reviews that a lot of people, together with one little one, had been “forcibly disappeared” after going to assist distribution websites in Rafah in southern Gaza.
“Stories of enforced disappearances concentrating on ravenous civilians in search of their fundamental proper to meals will not be solely stunning, however quantities to torture,” mentioned the specialists, who’re mandated by the UN Human Rights Council however who don’t converse on behalf of the UN itself.
“Utilizing meals as a instrument to conduct focused and mass disappearances wants to finish now.”
In response, the GHF mentioned it had discovered no proof of “enforced disappearances” at its support websites.
In response to the AFP information company, the GHF mentioned in response to the specialists’ assertion: “We function in a conflict zone the place severe allegations exist in opposition to all events working exterior our websites. However inside GHF services, there is no such thing as a proof of enforced disappearances.”
New famine deaths
With the enclave within the grips of a humanitarian disaster, the Gaza Ministry of Well being additionally mentioned on Thursday that 4 extra folks, together with two youngsters, had died of malnutrition and hunger within the enclave, elevating hunger-related deaths to 317 folks, together with 121 youngsters, for the reason that conflict began.
“The scene on the bottom is sort of heartbreaking,” Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reported from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.
“Households are nonetheless lining up in entrance of soup kitchens for hours underneath the scorching warmth, typically to return to their non permanent shelters empty-handed,” he mentioned.
“Others are risking their lives to journey to distribution factors to hunt meals support.”
Israel’s army marketing campaign has devastated the territory and displaced many of the roughly two million Palestinians there.
It began after Hamas’s October 2023 assaults on Israel, which killed 1,139 folks with one other 251 taken captive. A lot of the captives have since been launched by diplomatic negotiations though 50 stay in Gaza, of whom 20 are mentioned to be alive.
Israel, in the meantime, has not responded publicly to Hamas’s acceptance of a proposal for a ceasefire that may enable the return of a few of the captives.
Israeli officers have, nevertheless, insisted that they might solely settle for a deal that sees all the captives launched and Hamas’s give up.
Greater than 62,900 Palestinians, most of them ladies and kids, have been killed by the Israeli army in Gaza, based on native well being officers.
