At least nine people, including five children, have been killed in an Israeli strike while fetching water in al-Mawasi, an area of southern Gaza which Israel has designated as a safe zone, health officials said.
A doctor from al-Nasser hospital shared a picture of the children’s bodies in the hospital, as well as a picture of water jugs left in a pool of blood at the site of the attack on Tuesday.
The attack came shortly after the Israel Defense Forces encouraged people to leave Gaza City for al-Mawasi, before Israel’s looming invasion of Gaza City. The Israeli military has sought to displace people from the city before its offensive and has promised that southern Gaza would be able to accommodate them, despite experts disagreeing with the suggestion.
“We wish to remind you that in al-Mawasi, enhanced services will be provided with an emphasis on access to medical care, water and food,” the Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee said in a post on X on Tuesday afternoon.
Israel continued to push ahead with its operation and began the mobilisation of tens of thousands of reservists on Tuesday.
At least 60,000 reservists will be called up, with the service of an additional 20,000 to be extended as the Israeli military slowly ramps up its military activity in Gaza City, which it has described as the last stronghold of Hamas.
Israel has said that the operation, known as Gideon’s Chariots II, to take over Gaza City will involve five divisions from the country’s standing army and could extend into next year.
Already Israel has pushed into the western parts of Gaza City, levelling the once prosperous neighbourhood of Zeitoun and declaring the entire city a “dangerous combat zone” last week. It has intensified its strikes, claiming to have killed the spokesperson of Hamas’s armed wing, Abu Obeida, in a strike on an apartment building in Gaza City on Saturday.
The Israeli strikes and gunfire killed at least 76 people across the Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours, Gaza health authorities said.
On Monday, the world’s leading association of genocide scholars said Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of the crime. Aid groups have warned that an invasion of Gaza City and the forced displacement of about 1 million people could have devastating humanitarian consequences. The population of the city has swelled over the course of the last 23 months as it became a refuge for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced from the near 80% of Gaza that is under evacuation order.
The city is already gripped by famine created by Israeli restrictions on aid entering Gaza, which experts say will worsen even in the absence of a military operation. Thirteen people, including three children, died from malnutrition on Tuesday, bringing the total number of people who have starved to death over the last 23 months to 361 – the majority of whom have died since July.
Israel is seeking to forcibly displace Gaza City’s residents before its operation and has tried to entice Palestinians to southern Gaza, which already is packed with other displaced people.
The head of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, said on Saturday that there is no safe way to conduct a mass evacuation of Gaza City and that no other part of Gaza had the capacity to absorb such mass displacement. Earlier in August, the UN human rights office spokesperson Thameen al-Kheetan said that Palestinians in al-Mawasi had “little or no access to essential services and supplies, including food, water, electricity and tents”.
Many residents of Gaza City have refused to leave, suspicious of what awaits them in southern Gaza after Israel has attacked so-called humanitarian zones in the past.
The Gaza City operation, pushed forward by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, under pressure from far-right members of his ruling coalition, faces stiff opposition at home. Tens of thousands of Israelis have marched across the country in protest against the war, which they say is aimless and endangers the lives of the remaining hostages in Gaza.
Israeli media has reported internal opposition between the country’s cabinet and the military chief of staff. According to Israeli media’s retelling of a security cabinet meeting on Sunday, the Israeli military chief urged the government to take a ceasefire deal instead of pressing on with the Gaza City operation, which he said could harm the lives of hostages in Gaza.
Hamas had accepted a ceasefire proposal two weeks prior that resembled an earlier US draft which Israel had approved in prior rounds of negotiations. Israel has yet to respond to the proposal, baffling mediators.
Israel’s planned military operation in Gaza City as well as its continued systematic starving of the territory’s population has prompted a wave of global condemnation.
On Tuesday, Belgium announced it would join a growing list of European countries in recognising Palestine as a state. It also announced it would ban goods from Israeli settlements in the West Bank and designate Hamas leaders, violent Israeli settlers and two far-right Israeli ministers as persona non grata.
“This is not about sanctioning the Israeli people but about ensuring that their government respects international and humanitarian law and taking action to try to change the situation on the ground,” the Belgian foreign minister, Maxime Prévot, said in a post on X. He added that the EU should suspend its trade pact with Israel to further pressure it.
The move further increases the growing international isolation of Israel as its war in Gaza and subsequent famine grinds on.
At least 63,633 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza over the last 23 months. Israel launched the war in Gaza after Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages on 7 October 2023.