Israeli forces intensified demolitions and airstrikes in Gaza City and Khan Yunis, killing dozens—including children—and targeting aid seekers, as the death toll in the ongoing genocide surpassed 64,000.

The Israeli occupation army continued demolishing residential buildings in Gaza City on Saturday as part of its plan to forcibly displace residents and seize control of the city, Al-Jazeera reported. 

At the same time, medical sources documented new deaths and injuries in fresh raids.

This morning, the Israeli military issued a statement urging residents of Gaza City to evacuate immediately to the southern Gaza Strip via the Rashid Coastal Road. It claimed that the Mawasi area had been designated a “humanitarian zone,” despite repeated bombardments there since the start of the war.

According to Al-Jazeera, Israeli forces are carrying out large-scale demolition operations north of Gaza City, targeting remaining multi-story residential buildings. 

On Friday, the army destroyed the Mushta Tower in the west of the city as part of its new campaign to level entire residential blocks.

Israeli Defense Minister Yisrael Katz announced on Friday an intensification of the military campaign in Gaza, declaring, “Now the gates of hell are opening.” 

In response, the Palestinian Resistance Movement Hamas said the statement amounted to an admission of genocide.

Residential Tower Sheltering Displaced Families Destroyed in Gaza City

Children among the Dead

The Al-Shifa Medical Complex reported that six people, including two children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a house in Al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza City. 

Another child was killed, and several others were wounded, in Israeli artillery shelling of the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, according to ambulance and emergency services.

Medical sources confirmed that since dawn on Friday, 51 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip—36 of them in Gaza City alone.

For weeks, Israel has been destroying entire residential blocks in Gaza City and Jabalia in the north as part of its operation dubbed “Gideon’s Chariots 2,” aimed at occupying the city. Human rights organizations and multiple countries have condemned the campaign, warning of a bloody escalation and the mass displacement of nearly one million residents.

The United Nations said thousands of Palestinians have fled to the Gaza coast as killings and famine intensify.

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Targeting Aid Seekers

In the south, the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis reported that three Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire near an aid distribution center southwest of the city.

Al-Jazeera added that Israeli airstrikes also hit a building in downtown Khan Yunis, while helicopters fired missiles east of the city.

Since October 2023, Israel—backed by the United States—has waged a war of extermination against Gaza’s population, marked by mass killings, starvation, destruction, and forced displacement, in defiance of international calls and International Court of Justice rulings to halt the war.

The ongoing genocide has killed more than 64,000 Palestinians and injured 162,000, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. Among the dead, 376 were killed by starvation, including 134 children.

(PC, AJA)