Israeli forces kill 5 Palestinians in latest Gaza ceasefire violation

At least five Palestinians were killed after the Israeli military launched renewed attacks in Gaza City, in its latest violation of the ceasefire.

A medical worker at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital confirmed receiving the bodies of four Palestinians who were killed in an Israeli drone strike on the Zeitoun neighbourhood, Anadolu Agency reported.

The Palestinians were collecting wood when they were struck by the drone, the news agency quoted eyewitnesses as saying.

They were collecting firewood as Israel’s siege of the Palestinian territory had caused a shortage of cooking gas over the last two weeks, Al Jazeera reported.

In a separate attack, a Palestinian fisherman was killed after an Israeli gunboat opened fire near the northern shore of Gaza City.

Zakaria Bakr, an advocate for fishermen’s rights in Gaza, confirmed to Anadolu that Mohammed Riyad Siyam, 22, was killed by rocket fire from an Israeli gunboat while he was working meters off the coast of Al-Sudaniya, in the northwest of the city.

Israel last week cut off electricity and blocked aid supplies of food, medicine and fuel to the war-ravaged territory, claiming it was doing so to pressure Hamas to extend the first phase of the ceasefire.

Israel cut the power supply at the start of the war, and on Sunday, energy minister Eli Cohen said he had instructed the Israel Electric Corporation not to sell electricity to the Palestinian territory in what he described as a bid to put pressure on Hamas to free hostages.

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A ceasefire brokered by the US, Qatar and Egypt came into effect on 19 January and saw Hamas exchange 33 Israeli and five Thai hostages for around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

The 42-day first stage of the truce has ended and Hamas and Israel have been at loggerheads over the second and third phases, which tackle the post-war governance of Gaza and the future of Hamas itself. The subsequent phases originally envisaged Israel pulling out all its troops from the besieged territory.

“The situation is catastrophic in the literal sense. The existing generators are worn out and the fuel isn’t enough. There’s no potable water. The simplest necessities of life are not available,” Sohaib Al-Hams, director of the Kuwaiti Hospital, said.

He said that ambulances had stopped working after Israel almost completely blocked the entry of fuel into the territory.

Israel launched a war on Gaza after Hamas carried out an attack on southern Israel in October 2023 that saw around 1,200 people killed and 251 taken hostage.

Israel’s onslaught has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and left most of Gaza’s people displaced and destitute.

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An investigation by UN experts found that Israel carried out “genocidal acts” against the Palestinians in Gaza and employed sexual violence as a strategy of war. “Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended to prevent births, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention,” the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory concluded.

These actions, in addition to a surge in maternity deaths due to restricted access to medical supplies, amounted to the crime against humanity of extermination, the commission said in its report.

Israel’s permanent UN mission in Geneva dismissed the report’s conclusions as unfounded, biased and lacking credibility.

Israeli forces have “concrete directives and policies which unequivocally prohibit such misconduct”, the mission said in a statement, adding that its review processes were in line with international standards.