The Ministry of Health in Gaza announced that the death toll had risen to 201 and the injured to 368 in the Gaza Strip during the past 24 hours as a result of the Israeli aggression on the strip, which has claimed more than 20,000 lives so far.
On the 78th day of the aggression against Gaza, the Israeli occupation continued to bombard various areas in the besieged Strip, killing and injuring dozens of Palestinians in Jabalia and Bureij.
On Saturday, the government media office in Gaza announced that the number of journalists killed had risen to 99 since the beginning of the war on Gaza on 7 October.
The Civil Defence in Gaza reported that dozens of decomposed bodies were retrieved from the streets of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, after the Israeli occupation forces pulled out of them. The Civil Defense said in a statement that most of the bodies retrieved in Beit Lahia were subjected to field executions and mauled by dogs.
Moreover, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that more than 80% of children in the Gaza Strip “suffer from acute food insecurity.” The organization said in a statement that its estimates “indicate that in the coming weeks, at least 10,000 children under the age of five will suffer from malnutrition that will endanger their lives.”
It stated: “These results indicate that all children under five in the Gaza Strip – numbering 335,000 children – are at high risk of acute malnutrition and death, which could have been avoided if it were not for the continued escalating risk of famine.”
On the ground, fierce clashes erupted between the resistance and the Israeli occupation army in the north, centre and south of the Gaza Strip.
In the meantime, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), announced the killing and injuring of a large number of occupation soldiers, and the destruction of tanks and military vehicles through ambushes and attacks in Jabalia, Juhr al-Dik, and Khan Yunis.
Furthermore, the Al-Qassam Brigades announced the destruction of an Israeli troop carrier with an “Al-Yassin 105” shell north of the city of Khan Yunis and set it ablaze. It added that its fighters lured 5 Israeli soldiers from the Yahalom unit to a tunnel east of Khan Yunis, blew it up after they entered, and “eliminated them from point zero.”
Al-Qassam also announced that two Israeli soldiers were targeted with an RPG shell in Khan Yunis, killing them on the spot and tearing them apart. The Brigades added in a later statement that its fighters targeted an Israeli foot force east of Juhr al-Dik with an explosive device and machine guns, killing and injuring its members.
Al-Qassam fighters also killed all members of 4 Israeli military jeeps in a tight ambush in Juhr al-Dik by detonating a field of anti-personnel and anti-armour devices, in addition to destroying an Israeli tank that rushed to the scene with a “Yassin 105” shell and targeted rescue and evacuation forces in the operation area.
The brigades said that their fighters destroyed 5 Israeli tanks in Jabalia, north of the Gaza Strip, using two Israeli missiles that did not detonate, and killed and injured all of their members.
At the same time, Israeli media said that Israeli tanks began a ground operation from Kerem Shalom to the Philadelphia axis on the Gaza Strip border with Egypt.