Israel continues to intensify its attacks in the Gaza Strip, while negotiations for a ceasefire may be close to a conclusion.
By Palestine Media Agency, January 14, 2025
KEY FIGURES
in Gaza since October 7, 2023:
46,584 Palestinians killed by Israel
including 17,000 children, including 800 infants under 1 year old
10,000 people trapped under the rubble
109,731 injured
1.9 million displaced
“Impossible to stay alive”
Vibe Klarup, director of Amnesty Denmark, said Israel was committing genocide. “When we say that Israel is committing genocide, it is not an opinion, but a conclusion based on thorough legal analysis,” she said at the European Palestinian Network conference in Copenhagen. “It is increasingly impossible to stay alive in the Gaza Strip…Our role as a people is to stop the genocide.”
While negotiations for a ceasefire agreement appear to be on the verge of success, Israel has not suspended and even appears to have intensified its attacks in the Gaza Strip. “The more we hear about a possible ceasefire, the more the pace of attacks accelerates and the more airstrikes on Gaza City increase,” says Hani Mahmoud, Al Jazeera correspondent in Deir Al- Balah in central Gaza, adding that the majority of attacks he observes target areas densely populated with civilians.
Attacks “without any prior warning”
On Saturday January 11, at least eight people were killed during an Israeli attack on a school housing displaced Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip. The same day, an Israeli attack targeted the Zainab al-Wazir school, in the Jabalia al-Balad area, north of Gaza, killing eight civilians including two women and two children, according to the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service.
“The Israelis targeted us without any prior warning,” said one survivor, sifting through the debris. “They attacked us with a missile. I don’t know where our children are. I don’t know anything about them, whether they are injured or killed.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/11/israel-steps-up-attacks-on-civilians-in-gaza-amid-ceasefire-push
Later on Saturday, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported Israeli strikes on various sites in Gaza, including an attack on a house in the Daraj neighborhood of Gaza City, which killed four Palestinians and injured several others. The Israeli army also killed three Palestinians in an airstrike targeting a refugee camp in Deir Al-Balah, and two others in Khan Younis and the Bureij refugee camps.
Israeli strikes continued on Sunday January 12, notably affecting the Bureij and Nuseirat refugee camps in Gaza City. An attack in the east of the city, in the Shujayea neighborhood, killed at least three Palestinians.
The same day, in a separate attack reported by witnesses, in the Mukhabarat area north of Gaza City, two people were shot dead by Israeli fire while collecting firewood due to the shortage of cooking gas in the area. Israel also killed two people in an airstrike targeting the Bureij camp.
On Monday January 13, the Israeli army killed at least 45 Palestinians, medical sources report. The attacks mainly targeted the center of Gaza City and several areas in the besieged north of the enclave.
In Gaza City, an Israeli attack on a family home near the al-Ghafari intersection killed at least six people and injured more than 30, a spokesperson for the Gaza relief organization said on Telegram. Five other people were killed in an Israeli airstrike targeting a school converted into a refugee shelter in the city center. An air raid was also reported in the Daraj neighborhood, causing at least 7 Palestinian casualties. The Israeli army killed two more Palestinians in the west of the city and two more in a bombing on Al-Jalaa Street in the city center.
At least 70 children killed in five days
On Sunday, civil defense announced that 70 children had been killed by the Israeli army over the previous five days. Israel’s incessant attacks on Gaza target densely populated areas and are regularly launched without warning and many children are victims: the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reports that one child is injured or killed every 10 minutes in Gaza.
The use of explosive weapons in Gaza in 2024 condemned an average of 475 children per month (or 15 per day) to potentially permanent disabilities, including serious arm or leg injuries, and hearing impairment, Save the Children.
“In Gaza, childhood has been replaced by pain and trauma, while the means to effectively treat and support children have been systematically eradicated,” said Alexandra Saieh, global humanitarian policy manager at Save the Children . “The scale and severity of this physical and mental damage not only destroys individual lives, but threatens both the fabric and future of Palestinian society for generations to come. To preserve these futures and prevent further irreparable damage, immediate action by the international community is urgently needed. Every day, every delay risks further compromising the increasingly fragile future of Palestinian children.”
In addition to the mortal risk of air and ground attacks, children are also the first victims of infections and epidemics, and are more vulnerable to the cold. Almost all of Gaza’s 1.1 million children need psychosocial and mental health support due to ongoing Israeli bombing, repeated displacement and dire living conditions in the cold, according to UNICEF winter. At least 19,000 Palestinian children have been orphaned since October 7, 2023.
