Relatives mourn next to the body of their loved one at the Indonesian Hospital after an Israeli airstrike on Jabalia’s Al-Tawba Medical Clinic, in Bait Lahia, northern Gaza Strip, on Saturday. At least 15 Palestinians were killed in the strike. Photo by Haitham Imad/EPA-EFE
May 16 (UPI) — Officials with the United Nations said Friday that more than 19,000 Palestinians had been displaced amid Israel’s latest war offensive to seize increased control of Gaza, as human rights groups alleged that Israel is targeting civilians.
The blitz by Israel caused the death toll in Gaza to top 53,000 by Friday morning, the Hamas-run Civil Defense Agency said earlier in the day.
“Over 19,000 people forced to flee again since Thursday afternoon, according to the Site Management Cluster,” the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration shared on social media. “Many with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Nowhere is safe in Gaza.”
The Israeli Defense Forces said on social media that the extensive attacks to seize control of areas in Gaza is necessary to achieve “all the goals of the war,” as it moves further from the ceasefire with Hamas that was intended to move into its second phase earlier this year.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, a human rights group, said Friday that Israel has adopted a “scorched earth policy” while “committing massacres,” including “deliberate targeting of Palestinian civilians in their homes, shelters, and vital facilities.”
The human rights group said its field team documented the killing of more than 115 Palestinians in North Gaza alone in less than 12 hours on Friday, including civilians who were killed as they tried to seek shelter from the bombardment.
“This was due to Israeli shelling that targeted at least 10 homes in Tal al-Zaatar in Jabalia and the al-Sultan neighborhood in Beit Lahia, completely destroying them over the heads of their residents,” the human rights group said.
“This resulted in the deaths of dozens of civilians, including children and women, in mass massacres that confirm the escalation of the systematic pattern of mass killing against Palestinian civilians in the Strip.”
The U.N.’s agency for Palestinian relief said last week that at least 22 displacement orders had been issued by the IDF since March 18, leaving at least 70% of Gaza under the control of the Israeli military. About 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced amid Israel’s war.
The news comes as it was revealed more than 10,100 Palestinians are still detained in Israel, even with hundreds being released amid prisoner swaps with Hamas, according to the Palestinian Commission of Detainees Affairs.
Those captives include 37 female prisoners and more than 400 children, as well as some 1,846 detainees from Gaza who were classified as “illegal combatants.” Those numbers are mostly from the West Bank and don’t fully include all people detained in Gaza.
Meanwhile, Defense for Children International Palestine — a civil rights group operating in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza — alleged Friday that Israeli forces carried out an attack the previous day in which they used a girl as a “human shield.”
The organization said Israeli forces on Thursday morning had besieged a three-story residential building in the West Bank city of Tammoun. killing everyone in the building and then demolishing it over their bodies.
“During the attack, Israeli special forces entered nearby houses and detained many Palestinians, including women and children, in the courtyard of a house opposite the besieged building. Israeli soldiers positioned themselves behind the group of Palestinians, firing their weapons toward the building over their heads,” the rights group said.
One of the people allegedly detained during the operation was an 11-year-old girl.
