Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Monday that Israeli forces killed 104 Palestinians and wounded 356 over the previous 24-hour period as US-backed Israeli strikes continued to pound targets across the Strip and Israeli troops continued to kill people seeking aid.
The ministry said the body of a Palestinian killed by a previous Israeli attack was also recovered from the rubble. “There are still a number of victims under the rubble and on the streets, and ambulance and civil defense crews cannot reach them,” the ministry wrote on Telegram.
Israeli strikes on Monday included the overnight bombing of a medical clinic in Gaza City’s Remal neighborhood that was being used as a shelter for displaced Palestinians. At least six people were reported killed in the strike, including a baby.
On Monday night, Israeli media reported that six Israeli soldiers were killed and others were wounded in an ambush in Beit Hanoun. Palestinian fighters reportedly detonated an explosive targeting an Israeli armored vehicle.
The Health Ministry said that among the dead over the past day were seven Palestinians attempting to get aid. The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that five people were killed and others were wounded on Monday when Israeli troops opened fire on a crowd seeking aid near a distribution point run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in Rafah, southern Gaza.
Since the GHF began operating in Gaza at the end of May, 758 Palestinians have been killed and 5,005 have been wounded while attempting to get food, according to the Health Ministry’s numbers. The Israeli military admitted that its forces had killed some civilians near the aid sites after Haaretz reported that IDF troops had been given orders to shoot unarmed Palestinians seeking food even though they posed no threat.
American contractors who worked at GHF sites have also blown the whistle on their colleagues for using live ammunition and stun grenades to disperse hungry Palestinians who posed no threat. One former contractor who spoke to the BBC said that in at least one incident, it appeared a civilian was hit by live fire.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said the latest violence has brought the death toll since October 7, 2023, to 57,523 and the number of wounded to 136,617. Studies have found that the Health Ministry’s numbers are a significant undercount, and estimates that factor in indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege and destruction of all of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure bring the death toll into the hundreds of thousands.