Bombs hit HQ of Red Crescent in Gaza

Israel bombed the headquarters of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Khan Younis on Tuesday as the death toll from nearly three months of war on Gaza passed 22,000.

The Gaza Health Ministry said 207 people had been killed in the previous 24 hours, with the southern Gaza Strip pounded by tank shells and airstrikes.

The latest bloodshed came after Israel said it planned to pull back some troops, signalling a new phase in the war amid global concern over the plight of Gaza residents. The Israeli bombardment has reduced much of the territory to rubble and engulfed its 2.3 million residents in a humanitarian disaster.

In a tent camp for displaced Palestinians in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, Shadi Maarouf, his wife Safeya and their six children huddled around a campfire. “We have nothing. We are living in cold, as you can see. We use straps of clothes for the fire, there is no firewood,” Maarouf said.

“There is no water even to clean up or wash ourselves. If I want to pray, I perform ablution using the sand. There is no drinking water. There is no tent to protect us.”

Gaza residents said Israeli warplanes and tanks stepped up bombardments of the eastern and northern areas of Khan Younis, where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge after being forced from their homes elsewhere in the densely populated territory.

At one house in the centre of Khan Younis, medical teams retrieved the bodies of two women killed in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday morning. Another strike on Al-Nusseirat refugee camp in northern Gaza killed or wounded several people in a house.