People check the rubble of a building hit in an overnight Israeli strike in Beit Lahya in the northern Gaza Strip on November 17, 2024. (Photo by AFP)
Cairo, November 18 (RHC)-- The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has strongly condemned Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, calling on the international community to stop Israeli crimes and acts of aggression in the besieged territory.
The OIC made the remarks in a statement on Sunday, a day after Israel targeted a UN-run school currently housing displaced people in Al-Shati’ camp, west of Gaza City, and bombed Nuseirat refugee camp and the town of Beit Lahiya, leaving hundreds of casualties, most of them women and children.
The organization denounced as a “flagrant violations of international law” Israel's latest war crimes, urging the international community to stop the massacres committed by the occupying regime.
The OIC further called for ensuring the adequate and sustainable entry of humanitarian aid to all parts of Gaza, particularly the north, as well as providing international protection for Palestinians.
Meanwhile, Gaza's Government Media Office (GMO) said at least 96 Palestinians have been killed and 60 others injured in Israeli airstrikes on several buildings in the northern and central Gaza Strip. According to the media office, more than 72 people lost their lives in the attacks in Beit Lahia, while 24 other Palestinians were killed in the refugee camps of Nuseirat and Bureij in the central part of the blockaded territory.
The office also noted that the Israeli military “was aware that dozens of displaced civilians were inside these buildings, and that the majority of them were children and women who had been displaced from their neighborhoods.”
It further called on the international community to denounce “these horrific massacres against displaced civilians," demanding accountability for the Israeli regime and its international backers-- namely the United States, the UK, Germany, and France.
Earlier in the day, a medical source told Anadolu news agency that an Israeli airstrike targeted a five-story residential building in Beit Lahiya, killing about 50 people and leaving several others trapped under the rubble. The Palestinian Civil Emergency said around 70 people were living in the property.
An Israeli strike also targeted another house in the area, killing 15 people and injuring several others, another medical source said.
Two more Palestinians were killed when Israeli warplanes struck another residence in Beit Lahia, the source added.
The Israeli army sent tanks into Beit Lahiya and the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia last month in what it said was an offensive to fight members of the Hamas resistance group waging retaliatory attacks and prevent them from regrouping.
The towns have been besieged for more than 40 days, without food, water, medicine, or aid, and under constant bombing, shelling, and Israeli drones and quadcopters.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Flood against the Israeli regime in response to the occupying entity’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed 43,799 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 103,601 others. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under rubble.
