Palestinians inspect the damage in the aftermath of an attack on a tent camp in southern Gaza on December 5, 2024.   (Photo by Reuters)

Gaza City, December 5 (RHC)-- Israeli attacks on the besieged territory have killed at least 48 Palestinians and wounded 201 in the latest 24-hour reporting period, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. 

More death and destruction in Gaza comes as Israel continues with its relentless air and artillery strikes across the besieged strip.  In one of its latest attacks, Israel hit a neighborhood in Gaza City which was already reeling from an overnight attack that killed over two dozen Palestinians.

Israel also hit a tent camp housing displaced people killing at least 21 and wounding 28 in southern Gaza.  The strike set several large tents sheltering displaced families in a crowded camp ablaze, and the fire was worsened by the explosion of cooking gas canisters and burning furniture of the displaced people.

On Thursday, the area was strewn with charred clothing, mattresses and other belongings among the twisted frames of burnt-out shelters.  Residents carried a body wrapped in carpets out of the charred wreckage of the makeshift shelters in Mawasi, near the beach west of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, where tens of thousands of people have sheltered for months.

British charity known as Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) said Israel’s strike on the al-Mawasi camp burned about 40 tents in the camp, including one where a staff member was sheltering.

Israel calls the area a so-called humanitarian zone and has long told people to go there for their safety.   Gaza medics at Nasser Hospital confirmed that several women and children had been killed in the Israeli strike.  

Israeli has recently intensified its attacks on northern Gaza where thousands of Palestinians are sheltering without food, water, or medicine and no aid is allowed. 

It has been reported that patients in Kamal Adwan Hospital were targeted by Israeli drones, leaving many killed and injured.

The attacks came on the day a rights group released its report saying Israel’s actions in Gaza met the definition of the crime of genocide.

The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas welcomed the report, saying it was “a new message to the international community … on the need to act to bring an end to this genocide that has lasted for more than 400 days.”

Mourners, however, said the latest attacks demonstrated that the declaration had come too late.  “It is the 430th day of the war today, and Israel has been carrying out massacres and genocide from the first ten days of the war,” Abu Anas Mustafa, a Gaza resident said at a funeral in Khan Yunis.

Since the onset of the Israeli war on Gaza in October last year, nearly 44,600 people have been killed, most of them women and children.