ISTANBUL

At least 86 Palestinians, including a journalist, were killed and scores of others injured since dawn Saturday in relentless Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip, medical sources said.

Israeli forces carried out strikes in Gaza City, including the al-Daraj neighborhood's al-Sidra area, targeting a civilian gathering, killing eight people, four of whom were children.

In the city’s al-Tuffah neighborhood, an airstrike on a family home killed 11 people, among them children and women.

A strike on another family home in the Shati refugee camp claimed the lives of nine people. Another strike in the city's west, near Abbas Junction, killed five more Palestinians.

Israeli strikes killed one person in a residential apartment on al-Wehda Street in al-Rimal and another in the Shejaiya neighborhood when they were targeted using a drone.

Israeli strikes also hit a group of displaced Palestinians on al-Rashid Street, a route Israel designates as a “safe corridor” for evacuation to the south, killing one person and injuring others.

Six more people were killed in separate attacks across Gaza City.

Central Gaza

In al-Nuseirat refugee camp, an airstrike on a family home killed nine people, including a couple and their children. Another strike on a civilian gathering killed four, including two children.

The Israeli army also killed 12 Palestinians, including children, and injured 60 others in an airstrike targeting a crowd of civilians in the market area in the same camp, according to a statement from Al-Awda Hospital.

In al-Zawaida, a strike on a family home killed three people.

In Deir al-Balah, Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Daya was killed in an Israeli strike that targeted a displacement tent, bringing the death toll of journalists killed since October 2023 to 252.

Near the Netzarim Corridor, Israeli gunfire killed five Palestinians waiting for aid near a US-Israeli distribution center. Three others were killed in ongoing attacks in the area.

Southern Gaza

In Khan Younis, one person was killed in an attack on a home in the Joura al-Aqqad neighborhood and another in a strike near the Atiyaf chalets in the northwest.

Five people were killed in an attack on a displacement tent near Asdaa Junction in al-Mawasi, west of the city.

In Rafah, Israeli gunfire wounded several Palestinians who were waiting for aid near a distribution center in the al-Shakoush neighborhood.

Ismail Al-Thawabta, director-general of the Gaza Government Media Office, said about 93% of the total displacement tents in the Strip have collapsed and are no longer suitable for living, emphasizing that there are no alternatives due to Israel's tightened closure of the crossings since last March.

“Out of 135,000 tents, 125,000 have collapsed and become uninhabitable,” he said in a statement.

Over nearly two years of the war, tens of thousands of displacement tents have been damaged by Israeli bombardments, either directly hit or affected by strikes in their vicinity, while others have deteriorated due to natural factors such as extreme summer heat and winter winds.

By November 2024, the Gaza government had reported that 100,000 tents had worn out.

Al-Thawabta explained that the displacement tents are now “scattered randomly on roadsides and near unsanitary areas, in an environment lacking the most basic requirements of life.”

With continued waves of displacement from Gaza City toward the south, he stressed that the central and southern governorates “can no longer accommodate more people, especially in the al-Mawasi area (west of Khan Younis), which has become overcrowded with hundreds of thousands of families.”

According to him, since the beginning of the genocide, nearly two million Palestinians have been subjected to forced displacement, while the Israeli army has directly targeted around 293 shelter centers.

The Israeli army has killed nearly 66,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in Gaza since October 2023. Months of air and ground assaults have left Gaza largely uninhabitable, pushing its population into famine.