Above photo: Fire erupts among tents of displaced civilians after Israeli attacks in courtyard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, October 14, 2024. STR/APA Images.
Israel bombed displacement shelters across Gaza and aid distribution points in Jabalia.
While Hezbollah intensified its fire on Haifa and Tel Aviv amid Israel’s continued bombardment of southern Lebanese towns.
Casualties
- 42,289 + killed* and at least 98,684 wounded in the Gaza Strip. 32,280 of the slain have been identified, including 10,627 children and 5,956 women, representing 60% of the casualties, and 2,770 elderly as of August 6, 2024. Some 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble.*
- 754+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes at least 146 children.**
- 2,309 Lebanese killed and more than 10,096 wounded by Israeli forces since October 8, 2023***
- Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,189.
- The Israeli army recognizes the death of 720 Israeli soldiers and the injury of at least 4,100 others since October 7.****
* Gaza’s branch of the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed this figure in its daily report, published through its WhatsApp channel on October 10, 2024. Rights groups and public health experts estimate the death toll to be much higher.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. This is the latest figure according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health as of October 9, 2024.
*** This figure was released by the Lebanese Health Ministry, updated on October 9, 2024. The counting is based on the Lebanese official date for the beginning of “the Israeli aggression on Lebanon,” when Israel began airstrikes on Lebanese territory after the beginning of Hezbollah’s “support front” for Gaza.
**** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported on August 4, 2024, that some 10,000 Israeli soldiers and officers have been either killed or wounded since October 7. The head of the Israeli army’s wounded association told Israel’s Channel 12 that the number of wounded Israeli soldiers exceeds 20,000, including at least 8,000 who have been permanently handicapped as of June 1. Israel’s Channel 7 reported that according to the Israeli war ministry’s rehabilitation service numbers, 8,663 new wounded joined the army’s handicap rehabilitation system since October 7 and as of June 18.
Key Developments
- Gaza branch of Palestinian Health Ministry says death toll surpasses 42,289, with 98,684 wounded since October 7, comprising 33% children, 18.4% women, and 8.6% elderly; at least 115 Palestinian children born and killed by Israeli forces since October 7.
- Palestinian Health Ministry says the death toll by the Israeli army or settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem has reached 749 since October 7.
- Lebanese Ministry of Health says 2,309 Lebanese people killed, over 10,782 wounded in hundreds of Israeli airstrikes across Lebanon, especially in the south and the Beqaa Valley as of the beginning of escalating hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel in September 2024.
- Israeli airstrikes on Wednesday set fire to displaced families’ tents in Deir al-Balah, targeting Palestinians gathered to receive aid in Jabalia and a shelter school in Nuseirat, killing 36 people, including 15 children, in a single day.
- Israel continues to besiege Jabalia and northern Gaza for the tenth day in a row amid a shortage of food and medical supplies.
- Israel continues to bomb southern Lebanese towns, faces stiff resistance from Hezbollah in south Lebanon.
- Hezbollah drone and rockets hit Haifa and Tel Aviv, including a Golani brigade training center south of Haifa.
- Israeli forces kill 12 Palestinians in the West Bank and east Jerusalem since last week, including one elderly man and two children.
- Israeli forces kill two Palestinians on Thursday in a raid on Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank.
- Israeli forces arrest 50 Palestinians on Wednesday and Thursday across the West Bank, raising the number of Palestinians arrested since October 7 to more than 11,000.
- Dozens of Israeli settlers attack Palestinian farmers during olive harvest in Qusra, south of Nablus, forcing them to leave their groves at gunpoint and under threat of destroying several olive trees.
- Israeli settlers attack and threaten Palestinian shepherds near Khirbet al-Maleh in northern Jordan Valley.
Israeli Airstrikes Burn Patients Alive At Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital In Central Gaza
Israel killed at least 62 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours according to the Gaza branch of the Palestinian Health Ministry. Israeli airstrikes and artillery shelling targeted houses and shelter centers across the strip, including three direct attacks on displaced Palestinians in the north and the center of the Gaza Strip.
In Deir al-Balah, Israeli drones opened fire at tents of displaced families in the perimeter of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, provoking a fire that spread across tents, killing at least four Palestinians and burning several patients alive in their hospital beds.
Harrowing images appeared on social media depicting the victims engulfed by flames and visibly moving while lying down in hospital beds as they burned alive, with bystanders screaming and unable to save them due to the conflagration.
Video footage also circulated of Palestinians trying to put out the fire. A survivor, a middle-aged woman, told Al Jazeera’s reporter that “we woke up to the sound of the strike, which blew away 40 tents. We spent the whole night transporting the injured. People were burned, some were melted.”
“People came here from everywhere escaping death, but we came to a second death,” she told Al Jazeera. “Without tents or cover, what will people do now? Winter is coming. Where shall we go?”
In Jabalia in northern Gaza, where Israeli forces continued their latest ground offensive for the tenth day in a row, Israeli quadcopter drones opened fire on Palestinians who had gathered to receive food at an UNRWA aid distribution center. According to Palestinian reports, at least 10 people were killed and some 40 were wounded.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to impose a total siege for the tenth consecutive day on the northern Gaza governorate, including Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun, and Jabalia, where 200,000 Palestinians continue to live and have been cut off from Gaza City. Local reports indicate an alarming increase in the lack of food and medical supplies.
On Wednesday, the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia, one of the few remaining functioning hospitals in the strip, issued an urgent call for medical supplies and fuel for generators. The hospital pointed out that the amount of fuel that could enter the area was only enough for 10 more days.
Israel’s siege on the northern Gaza Strip and its offensive on Jabalia began two weeks after Netanyahu announced to Israeli lawmakers that he was considering a plan put forward by several Israeli generals — known as the “Generals’ Plan” — aiming at emptying the north of the Gaza Strip of Palestinians by making the area uninhabitable. According to the Palestinian Civil Defense, 350 Palestinians have already been killed in the area since the beginning of the latest siege and offensive 10 days ago.
In Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, an Israeli airstrike targeted the Mufti school sheltering displaced families, killing at least 22 Palestinians, including 15 children and a woman, and wounding at least 80. The wounded were transferred to the al-Awda Hospital.
Since October 7, Israel has attacked 191 shelter centers for displaced Palestinians.
Hezbollah Drone Attack Injures Dozens Of Israeli Soldiers, Kills 4
At least four Israeli soldiers were reported killed by the Israeli army and some 64 were wounded on Wednesday in a Hezbollah drone attack on a military facility south of Haifa. Hezbollah said that the attack targeted a training center of the elite Israeli Golani Brigade in Benyamina, south of Haifa. The attack came a few hours after public declarations by Israel’s war minister, Yoav Gallant, that Israel had destroyed two-thirds of Hezbollah’s fighting capacity and arsenal.
On Thursday, a large rocket barrage launched from Lebanon reached the Tel Aviv area and the Ben Gurion airport, which Israeli authorities closed as alert sirens were activated in the Tel Aviv area. Israeli media reported that some 2 million Israelis rushed to their shelters.
Hezbollah’s intensification of attacks comes as Israel’s offensive on Lebanon completes 23 days since the pager explosions. Meanwhile, Israel continues to launch cross-border ground raids in southern Lebanon in what appears to be repeated attempts to invade Lebanese territory, which continues to face stiff resistance from Hezbollah fighters. On Wednesday, the Israeli army radio reported that 25 soldiers were wounded on Wednesday in combat in the south of Lebanon, while the Rambam hospital in Haifa, where Israeli soldiers wounded in Lebanon are usually transferred, announced that it received 12 wounded soldiers on Thursday and that one of them died later.
Meanwhile, Israeli air and artillery strikes continued to target southern Lebanese towns and villages. On Wednesday and Thursday, Israeli shells and missiles struck the areas of Tyre and Nabatieh in the western sector of southern Lebanon, in addition to several villages and towns in the central and eastern sectors. According to Lebanese reports, Israeli strikes hit the towns of Yaarib, Arqoub, Shebaa, Habariyeh, and Ansar, and Kafr Kila. Aita Shaab and Ramia were also bombed for over an hour last Wednesday.
Simultaneously, Israeli strikes included the border outpost near Naqoura, guarded by the UNIFL international peace-keeping forces. The strikes wounded two UNIFIL soldiers and caused damage to the international forces outpost last week. The number of UNIFIL soldiers wounded by Israeli fire in southern Lebanon rose later to five. Israel’s ambassador at the UN, Dany Danon, demanded last week for the UN to withdraw its forces five kilometers to the north.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned the targeting of UNIFIL forces, calling it a “violation of international humanitarian law.” On Thursday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said that there will not be any withdrawal of UNIFIL forces from southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah began a campaign of cross-border attacks against Israel on October 8, 2023 in support of Gaza, refusing to halt its operations unless Israel ends its war on the Palestinian enclave. Israel responded with increasing strikes on southern Lebanon escalating into targeted assassinations of Hezbollah leaders — including its Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah in late September. Israeli aggressions escalated into a bombing campaign across Lebanese territory in addition to a ground offensive that aimed to force Hezbollah to dissociate itself from the war on Gaza and withdraw its units to the north of the Litani River.