At least 33 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza Thursday, as the country ignored a U.N. General Assembly call for an immediate cease-fire in the devastated territory.
The dead included 12 guards securing aid trucks in southern Gaza. Seven guards were killed in a strike in Rafah, while another attack left five guards dead in Khan Younis, Gaza Civil Defense agency spokesperson Mahmud Basal said.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to enquiries about the two strikes.
"The occupation once again targeted those securing the aid trucks," Basal told AFP, adding that around 30 people, most of them children, were also wounded in the strikes.
"The trucks carrying flour were on their way to UNRWA warehouses," Basal noted, referring to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
"The occupation aims to destroy all services for citizens across the Gaza Strip."
Witnesses later told AFP that residents looted flour from the trucks after the strikes.
The United Nations and other aid organizations have repeatedly warned about the acute humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, exacerbated by the war that has persisted for over 14 months.
"Conditions for people across the Gaza Strip are appalling and apocalyptic," UNRWA spokeswoman Louise Wateridge told journalists during a visit to Nuseirat in central Gaza.
She added that life-saving aid to "besieged areas in north Gaza governorate has been largely blocked" since the Israeli military launched a sweeping assault several weeks ago.
Israeli air strikes on two homes near Nuseirat refugee camp and Gaza City killed 21 more people, including children, the civil defense agency said.
Fifteen people, at least six of them children, died "as a result of an Israeli bombing" of a building sheltering displaced people near Nuseirat, Basal said.
The bodies of six others killed in a strike on an apartment in Gaza City were taken to a hospital morgue, he added.
Israeli genocide in Gaza has killed at least 44,835 Palestinians, mostly women and children, the Health Ministry there said Thursday.
It added 106,356 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip, since the war began with the Hamas incursion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
