The Palestinian Foreign Ministry in a statement, has condemned ongoing and repeated crimes of “genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced displacement” by Israel in Gaza, especially its northern areas.

The statement added that Israel is claiming war as the only solution to achieve security and will continue to block any efforts to end the conflict.

This came as an Israeli strike on a school shelter in Deir el-Balah killed 28 Palestinians and wounded 54.

The ministry claimed that Israel’s aim is to isolate this area from the rest of Gaza and impose full Israeli control over it.

The ministry warned that the Israeli occupation’s expansion of its aggressive war against Gaza aims to deepen Israel’s crimes and confusion in the region, mixing agendas for the benefit of colonialism and far from the Palestinian cause.

Hamas reacted to the bombing of a school shelter and other attacks in Gaza, saying that the attacks are “Zionist war crimes with American cover as part of the war of genocide against our Palestinian people.”

It said that the violence is a continuation of a year of heinous operations of deliberately targeting defenceless civilians – in residential neighbourhoods, homes, shelters and displacement centres – with the support of the American administration, a partner in this genocide.

Hamas called on the international community to intervene, and said that inaction “portends the complete collapse of the international system with all its foundations, laws and values.”

Separately, the armed wing of Hamas says it successfully conducted a “complex ambush” that saw multiple Israeli armoured vehicles and soldiers hit east of besieged Jabalia in northern Gaza.

The Qassam Brigades said a convoy consisting of 12 military vehicles and a truck loaded with soldiers was targeted with multiple explosive devices.

Gaza’s Government Media Office also condemned the targeting of a school shelter by Israeli forces, saying that the majority of those killed or wounded were women and children.

It stated that the “the occupation army” was aware that this school included thousands of displaced children and women who were displaced from their homes and whose civilian neighbourhoods were bombed.

It added that the army chose the time of the bombing at the peak time when these children and women were moving to get their daily food.

The media office put the number of dead in the attack at 26, with 92 wounded, and said the number of displacement shelters bombed since the war began to 190.

“We condemn the Israeli occupation’s commission of this new massacre and the ongoing massacres against civilians, children and women, and we call on all countries of the world to condemn these ongoing crimes against the displaced, against civilians, against children and women.”
Gaza’s Government Media Office

UN Inquiry Accuses Israel Of Crime Of Extermination

Meanwhile, a United Nations inquiry said that it found that Israel carried out a concerted policy of destroying Gaza’s healthcare system in the Gaza war, actions amounting to both war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination.

A statement by ex-UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay released ahead of a full report accused Israel of “relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities” in the war.

Pillay, whose report will be presented to the UN General Assembly on October 30, 2024, said that children in particular have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system.

The UN inquiry’s statement also accused Israeli forces of deliberately killing and torturing medical personnel, targeting medical vehicles and restricting permits for patients to leave the besieged Gaza Strip.