Israel Targets Emergency Workers Trying to Help People Trapped in Gaza City
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Palestinians in Gaza City are enduring another wave of Israel’s genocidal onslaught as the occupation army intensified its bombardment, targeting civilians, rescue workers, hospitals, and aid seekers under a suffocating blockade designed to erase the population.
According to Gaza civil defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal, Israeli forces deliberately opened fire on emergency vehicles attempting to reach the wounded in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood. At the same time, occupation quadcopters dropped leaflets threatening forced displacement, warning residents to abandon areas where entire housing blocks had already been levelled.
Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Abu Azzoum reported from Deir el-Balah that Israel is employing “heavy artillery, drones and fighter jets” to pulverize residential districts, with bombardments shaking four Gaza City neighborhoods “day and night.” He described the devastation as “a full dismantling of civilian life to ensure that people will never be allowed back into this area.”
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to push forward his campaign to seize Gaza’s largest urban center and forcibly displace its residents into what Palestinians describe as concentration zones. His aggression persists despite criticism from the families of Israeli captives, members of the Israeli security establishment, and mounting condemnation from across the world.
As the army tightened its siege on Gaza City, air and drone strikes ripped through other parts of the enclave. Medical sources confirmed at least 44 Palestinians were killed on Friday alone, including 16 aid seekers waiting desperately for food.
The relentless assaults also struck hospitals, once again proving no place is spared. Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City was bombed and set ablaze, killing at least one person, while two more were slain at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah after drones hovered above before launching the fatal strike.
In the Tuffah neighborhood, a woman recovered the remains of her brother and father from the rubble of a home destroyed 46 days earlier. She said dozens of bodies had been left trapped since the Israeli strike because the blockade made it impossible to retrieve them. “What we are facing is too much. Too much torture and oppression. Torture, tiredness, and pain,” she told Al Jazeera Arabic.
At the same time, Israel has weaponized starvation as another tool of extermination. The UN reported that at least 1,760 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid since late May, nearly 1,000 of them at humanitarian distribution points. Most of the killings were carried out by Israeli forces, though US contractors have also been implicated.
Gaza’s Health Ministry confirmed that at least 240 people — including 107 children — have now died from starvation, while UNRWA warned nearly one in five children in Gaza City is suffering from malnutrition. Aid agencies say 600 trucks are needed daily to prevent mass famine, but only one-sixth of that number actually enters under Israel’s stranglehold.
Meanwhile, displaced Palestinians are also enduring severe dehydration as temperatures soar past 40°C. Many have no choice but to drink contaminated water. “It causes stomach cramps for adults and children, without exception,” displaced father Hosni Shaheen told the Associated Press. “You don’t feel safe when your children drink it.”
The deliberate targeting of civilians, hospitals, and aid convoys underscores Israel’s ongoing crimes against humanity in Gaza, where the enclave’s 2.3 million residents remain besieged, starved, and bombarded without reprieve.
