Gaza’s civil defence agency said an Israeli strike near Jabalia in the territory’s north killed 33 people at a refugee camp overnight from Friday to Saturday.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal announced “33 deaths and dozens of wounded”, while a medical source at the Al-Awda hospital told AFP that it had registered 22 dead and 70 wounded after the strike on the Tal al-Zaatar camp for Palestinian refugees.
North Gaza has been hit hard by Israeli strikes throughout Friday as the military presses into Jabalia with reports of houses being blown up up as tanks push through residential areas.
Footage shared online showed what appeared to be residential buildings destroyed by blasts with reports that dozens of civilians have been killed by the destruction.
Hospitals in the north have urgently called for fuel and medical supplies as they are overwhelmed by the daily stream of wounded.
Meanwhile, Hamas have confirmed the killing of its leader Yahya Sinwar, one day after he was killed.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the killing of Sinwar will not bring about an end to the year-long brutal war in Gaza.
Sinwar was killed by Israeli military in Rafah in southern Gaza, just months after Sinwar succeeded Ismail Haniyeh as the group’s leader.
Al Jazeera reports that the Israeli military has carried out another deadly strike on the Jabalia camp innorthern Gaza. This time, a bombardment targeted a house in the al-Tawbah area, killing at least four people and injuring 15 others. The attack is part of ongoing military operations in the densely populated region, further intensifying the humanitarian crisis.
Protest crackdowns, banned marches, media workers at risk — a UN expert on Friday accused Western nations and Israel of freedom of speech violations in the year since the Gaza war broke out.
“No conflict in recent times has threatened freedom of expression so seriously or so far beyond its borders than Gaza,” UN special rapporteur Irene Khan told reporters as she presented her report, “Global threats to freedom of expression arising from the conflict in Gaza.”
The Bangladeshi human rights lawyer, who has been the special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression since 2020, notably cited crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protests in Western democracies in the early months of the war.
On US university campuses, protests were “harshly” repressed, she said, alluding to the use of riot police to dislodge encampments.
In Europe, she noted that Germany had imposed a ban on pro-Palestinian demonstrations last October, with some restrictions still in place on such protests in various Germans regions, but “never on any pro-Israeli” rallies.
Turkey’s foreign minister on Friday offered his “condolences” to Hamas officials at a meeting in Istanbul following the death of the Palestinian militant group’s leader Yahya Sinwar.
Hakan Fidan “received the president of the Hamas Shura Council Mohammed Ismail Darwish and members of the political bureau” to whom “he presented his condolences for the martyr Yahya Sinwar,” the ministry said in a statement.
At the meeting they also discussed “the state of recent negotiations for a ceasefire deal allowing the exchange of hostages and prisoners”, Fidan’s ministry said.
“Fidan reiterated that Turkey would use all diplomatic means to mobilise the international community against the humanitarian catastrophe underway in Gaza,” it added.
