CAIRO: Israel killed 13 Palestinians in two airstrikes on Thursday that Gaza medics and Hamas said were part of a force protecting humanitarian aid trucks, but Israel’s military said they were Hamas militants trying to hijack the shipment.
Many of those killed in the attacks on Rafah and Khan Younis in southern Gaza had links to Hamas, medics and Palestinian residents said. The 13 were among 36 Palestinians killed in separate Israeli attacks on Thursday, the medics said.
The Israeli military said in a statement the two airstrikes aimed to ensure the safe delivery of humanitarian aid and accused Hamas members of planning to prevent the aid from reaching Gaza civilians who need it.
The statement said the Hamas members aimed to hijack the aid “in support of continuing terrorist activity.”
Armed gangs have repeatedly hijacked aid trucks after they roll into the enclave, and Hamas formed a task force to confront them. The Hamas-led forces have killed over two dozen members of the gangs in recent months, Hamas sources and medics said.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA initially reported those killed in the two airstrikes were guarding the aid trucks.
Hamas said Israeli military strikes have killed at least 700 police tasked with securing aid trucks in Gaza since the war began on Oct. 7, 2023. It has accused Israel of trying to protect acts of looting and “creating anarchy and chaos to prevent aid from reaching the people of Gaza.”
Children were among seven people killed when a residential building in Gaza City’s Al-Jalaa Street was bombed in a separate attack, WAFA said.
Another Israeli bombing killed 15 people in a house where displaced people were taking shelter, west of Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, medics and WAFA said.
In the northern Gaza refugee camp of Jabalia, where the army has operated since October, health officials said an orthopedic doctor, Saeed Judeh, was shot dead by Israeli forces while on his way to Al-Awda Hospital where he usually treated patients.
The health ministry said his death raised to 1,057 the number of health care workers killed since the war began in October last year.
Months of ceasefire efforts by Arab mediators, Egypt and Qatar, backed by the United States, have failed to conclude a deal between the two warring sides.
On Wednesday, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly voted to demand an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire and the immediate release of all hostages seized in Israel in October 2023 and held by Hamas in Gaza.
The war in the Palestinian enclave began after Hamas gunmen stormed into Israeli communities, killing around 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages back to Hamas-run Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Since then, Israel’s military has leveled swathes of Gaza, driving nearly all of its 2.3 million people from their homes, giving rise to deadly hunger and disease and killing more than 44,800 people, according to Palestinian health authorities.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where violence has surged since the Gaza war began, Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinians, at least one of them a militant, in separate raids in Nablus and Qalqilya, Palestinian and Israeli officials said.
Around 810 Palestinians, including many militants and civilians, have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since the Gaza war erupted on Oct. 7.