Gaza’s Health Ministry on Saturday, June 28 said Israeli attacks killed at least 81 people and wounded 422 over a 24-hour period, according to multiple media reports. Israel’s assault on al-Tuffah neighbourhood in Gaza City killed at least 20, including nine children, medical sources told Al Jazeera.
The Associated Press wrote that 11 people were killed on a street in eastern Gaza City, and 12 people died near the Palestine Stadium in Gaza City, which shelters displaced people.
A separate strike on a gathering in eastern Gaza City killed eight people, five of which were children. Al-Awda Hospital confirmed to the AP that two people were killed in a strike at an entrance to the Bureji refugee camp. In the Muwasi tent camp near Khan Younis, three children and their parents were killed in their sleep by an Israeli strike.
After speaking to “some of the people involved,” United States President Donald Trump said a ceasefire in Gaza could come “within the week,” The Washington Post reported.
“It’s a terrible situation that’s going on in Gaza,” Trump said to reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, June 28.
More than 56,000 Palestinians have died in Israeli assaults since Oct. 7,2023, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Israel’s military operations in Gaza began on that date after Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 in Israel and took 251 hostage, of which 50 still have not been returned.
Gaza is currently in a humanitarian crisis, with organizations reporting mass starvation and displacement, leading to charges of genocide by the International Court of Justice as well as war crimes from the International Criminal Court.
Israel ended its 11-week-long blockade on aid into Gaza in May, and in the same month, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is backed by the United States and Israel, said it’s been delivering meals to the area. However, hundreds of Palestinians who sought to get food have been killed near GHF sites, Gaza’s Health Ministry says.
Witnesses, hospital staff and experts said Israeli gunfire is responsible for the deaths. Israel maintains it only fired warning shots near crowds and not at them, and the GHF denied there have been any fatalities at the sites at all.
On Friday, June 27, though, Haaretz, Israel’s daily newspaper, reported that the Israeli army “deliberately fired at Palestinians near aid distribution sites over the past month.”
In interviews, officers and soldiers told Haaretz that commanders ordered troops to shoot at crowds to disperse them, even though “it was clear” they weren’t a threat. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz rejected the report’s claims and called them “blood libels.”
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on June 28 that the GHF is “inherently unsafe,” going on to say “it is killing people.”
“People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence,” Guterres said reporters, per Reuters.
