GAZA STRIP (Dispatches) -- The Zionist military has targeted a residential building only a few meters away from Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, killing and wounding at least 40 people, according to Gaza officials.
The Gaza government media office said the area had been deemed “safe” by the Zionist army.
“This is a continuation of the deception and fabrications by the Israeli occupation army to mislead public opinion,” the media office said.
“We condemn in the strongest terms the ongoing massacres and crimes of the occupation against our Palestinian people, and we call on the whole world to stop the genocidal war waged against civilians,” the office added.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said on Wednesday that four of its staff have been killed in an Israeli attack on an ambulance in the Salah al-Din area of central Gaza.
A journalist, identified as Ahmed Badir, has been killed in an Israeli bombing which targeted a house adjacent to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir al-Balah, according to Gaza’s government media office.
According to the office, Badir worked for the al-Hadaf media network.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health says that around 113 journalists have been killed by Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7.
Zionist forces have martyred at least 147 Palestinians and wounded 243 more across the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Wednesday.
This brings the death toll since October 7 to at least 23,357 with 59,410 wounded and more than 7,000 missing who are believed to be dead and buried under rubble.
Overall, four percent of Gaza’s population has been martyred, wounded or gone missing in three months of bombardment.
The majority of victims are children and women, according to health officials.
A Zionist lawmaker from the ruling Likud party doubled down on comments he made last month that Gaza should be “burned now”, saying that there are no innocent people left there.
According to Haaretz, Nissim Vaturi said he doesn’t see anything wrong in his words and that he stands behind what he said.
“It is better to burn, to bring down buildings than for soldiers to be hurt,” Vaturi said during an interview with Kol Barama radio on Wednesday.
He claimed that everyone in the northern Gaza Strip had been evacuated in an “orderly” fashion.
Since the early days of the war, the Zionist

regime has forcibly displaced nearly 1.9 million people in Gaza. Many were shot and killed while raising white flags and fleeing on roads designated by Israel as safe.
“I don’t think there are any innocents there now, not now and not when I said those things,” Vaturi said.
In the occupied West Bank, Zionist forces raided Nablus and besieged the Old City, injuring at least 12 Palestinians, Al Jazeera reported.