Israel kills 84 Palestinians in 24 hours in Gaza, family, journalists among dead

UN and aid agencies warn of famine and forced displacement as Gaza reels under deepening humanitarian catastrophe.

GAZA, Palestine (MNTV) – In one of the deadliest 24-hour periods in recent weeks, Israeli forces killed at least 84 Palestinians and injured 168 others in intensified attacks across the Gaza Strip, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.

Among the dead are children, journalists, and entire families.

In the early hours of Friday, five members of the Abu Taima family — a couple and their three children, aged eight, six, and four — were killed when an Israeli airstrike hit a displacement tent in the Al-Mawasi area of Khan Younis, southern Gaza.

Medical sources confirmed the family had been sheltering there after fleeing their home in eastern Khan Younis due to ongoing Israeli bombardments. Their bodies were retrieved from the rubble at dawn.

Elsewhere in Khan Younis, 15 more Palestinians were killed in separate Israeli airstrikes on residential homes in the Al-Manara neighborhood, according to local reporters.

In yet another alarming development, an Israeli drone struck near a cemetery in Abasan al-Kabira while civilians were gathered, though no casualties were reported.

Israeli forces also targeted a journalists’ tent stationed outside the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, killing two Palestinian journalists — Hilmi al-Faqawi and Saeed Amin Abu Hassanein.

The Government Media Office confirmed the deaths, raising the total number of Palestinian journalists killed since October 2023 to 212.

The media tent had been a hub for correspondents covering the deteriorating situation at the hospital and in the wider Khan Younis region. The attack has been condemned by press freedom advocates as part of a systematic campaign to silence independent reporting from the war zone.

The humanitarian toll continues to rise as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said on Friday that nearly 500,000 Palestinians have been newly displaced in the past month alone.

Most are now crammed into less than a third of Gaza’s territory — zones that the UN describes as “fragmented, unsafe, and barely habitable.”

Adding to the crisis, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) announced it has completely run out of food aid in Gaza. The enclave has been under a total Israeli blockade for eight weeks, which has blocked the entry of food, fuel, and medical supplies.

The Government Media Office warns that more than one million children are now at risk of famine.

Since Israel began its military campaign in Gaza following the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, at least 51,439 Palestinians have been confirmed killed and over 117,000 wounded, according to Gaza health officials.

The latest airstrikes come as Israel faces mounting legal scrutiny.

Last November, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, citing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Simultaneously, Israel is being tried at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for genocide, following a complaint lodged by South Africa.

International organisations continue to sound the alarm over the scale of destruction and human suffering.

With hospitals overwhelmed, food supplies exhausted, and half the population displaced, Gaza now teeters on the brink of collapse — a territory battered by war, suffocated by siege, and increasingly abandoned by the world.