Dozens More Palestinians Martyred, Wounded in Israeli Strikes

Date: 08 April 2025 - 21:21

News ID: ۱۳۸۲۴۱

GAZA CITY (Dispatches) – Gaza’s civil defense agency said on Tuesday that Israeli strikes overnight killed at least 19 people across the Palestinian territory, where the occupying regime has resumed its aggression.

Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that “19 civilians including several children were martyred” and dozens more wounded in the latest Israeli raids.

Five children and four adults were killed in a strike that hit a home in the central city of Deir el-Balah, while two separate pre-dawn attacks on Gaza City and Beit Lahia in the north left a total of 10 people dead, Bassal said.

Separately, a media outlet affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement, a Hamas ally, announced the death on Monday of an employee named Ahmed Mansur in an Israeli strike on a tent used by journalists in the Khan Yunis area.

The Palestinian government media office had on Monday reported the death of journalist Hilmi al-Faqaawi, who worked for a local news agency, in the same strike, which also wounded another nine.

The Zionist regime’s military meanwhile said the strike had targeted “Hassan Abdel Fattah Mohammed Aslih,” claiming that he was a Hamas fighter operated “under the guise of a journalist and owns a press company.”

Israel resumed intense strikes on the Gaza Strip on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire with Hamas. Efforts to restore the truce have so far failed.

According to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, at least 1,391 Palestinians have been killed in the renewed Israeli operations, taking the overall death toll since the start of the war to 50,752.

‘Shocking Accounts of Crimes’

Zionist troops have provided detailed testimonies describing extensive destruction and killings in Gaza during operations to establish a buffer zone along the fence, according to a new report by the Israeli group Breaking the Silence.

The report compiles accounts from soldiers involved in enforcing the buffer zone plan. The troops and commanders are not named, but their statements are described as deeply disturbing.

The group said: “One of these missions was to create a ‘buffer zone’ inside the Gaza Strip, which in practice meant razing the area to the ground. ... Through widespread, deliberate destruction, the military laid the groundwork for future Israeli control of the area.”

The buffer zone, referred to by soldiers as “the perimeter,” reportedly stretches from Gaza’s northern coast to the southern border with Egypt. It lies entirely within Gaza, beyond the regime’s internationally recognized borders.

A non-commissioned officer from the Armored Corps, discussing operations in January and February 2024, said troops were told there were no civilians in the area: “There is no civilian population. They’re terrorists, all of them. … There are no innocents.”

Describing their engagement orders, he said: “We go in and if we identify suspects, we shoot them.”

He also detailed the destruction: “The ‘bear’, the D9 (armored bulldozer), drives and mows down everything in its path. ... Essentially, everything gets mowed down, everything.”

When asked what that included, he replied: “Everything is everything. Everything that’s built, … orchards, cow sheds, chicken coops.”

He described the result as: “Hiroshima. That’s what I’m saying, Hiroshima.”

Another soldier, a first sergeant in Reserve Battalion 5, said their main task in Khuza’ah, Khan Younis, between December 2023 and January 2024 was demolition: “I’m talking up to hundreds of structure units, … the destruction is total.”

He explained that the Gaza Division mapped destruction zones using colors: “Green means more than 80% of buildings were taken down -- residential buildings, greenhouses, sheds, factories, … it needs to be flat.”

A first sergeant in the Combat Engineering Corps who served in northern Gaza in November 2023 said: “We take down houses, ... knock it down, so there’s absolutely nothing left, a pile of rubble.”

He described demolition assignments as daily tasks: “You get up in the morning, get the locations, … every day, except if we run out of explosives.”

He said platoons could demolish 40-50 houses per week: “It was a matter of half an hour per house.”

A reserve artillery officer said commanders had wide discretion in targeting: “There is no system of accountability in general. Anyone who crosses a certain line, that we have defined, is considered a threat and is sentenced to death.”