Time: 13:00 GMT
Date: 06 August 2022
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) continue its offensive on the Gaza Strip for the second day in a row as they intensively struck several houses, agricultural lands and military sites. As a result, two Palestinians were killed and 7 others were injured, including 2 women and 4 children.
Over the past hours, the Palestinians in Gaza lived in tense and fear amid overflight of several types of IOF’s warplanes that launched various airstrikes; some were on densely populated areas across the Gaza Strip.
In light of the humanitarian consequences of the Israeli offensive and the closure of crossings, Gaza Electricity Distribution Company (GEDCO) announced that it has been officially informed by the Palestinian Energy Authority that Gaza’s sole Power Plant will shut down at 12:00 after fuel supplies were halted due to the closure of the crossings since last Tuesday. GEDCO emphasizes that this will lead to electricity shortage and affect all vital facilities in Gaza and will worsen the humanitarian situation.
Further to the press release published by PCHR yesterday, the death toll since the beginning of the Israeli offensive has risen to 12, including 3 civilians: a woman and a girl, while 55 others have been injured, including 13 children and 6 women.
According to Palestinian Ministry of Health (MOH), 84 Palestinians have been injured, including 23 children and 13 women; 4 of them are in serious condition.
The following are the most significant developments:
At approximately 23:20 on Friday, 05 August 2022, 5 Palestinians, including a mother and her 3 children, were injured after an artillery shell landed on Foad Ghazi ‘Abdullah Farajallah’s house in Jabalia refugee camp, causing material damage to it.
At around 00:15 on Saturday, 06 August 2022, an artillery shell fell on the roof of Al-Quds Open University building in Beit Lahia, north of the Gaza Strip, causing a hole in its roof and damage to the study halls.
At around 08:00, IOF’s warplanes fired a missile at a land in al-Zanna area in Bani Suheila village, east of Khan Yunis. As a result, 2 Palestinians were injured: one of them namely Tameem Ghassan ‘Abdullah Hijazi (24) died upon arrival at the hospital while the other identified as Osama ‘Abed al-Rahman Hussain al-Souri (28) died around 3 hours later.
At around 11:10, IOF’s warplanes launched 2 missiles at an uninhabited house in Bani Suheila village, east of Khan Yunis. As a result, the house was destroyed, and a child in the nearby area was slightly injured. Also, a woman was injured due to an Israeli strike on a nearby military site, western Khan Yunis.
Around the same time, IOF’s warplanes targeted a 3-storey house belonging to Shamalakh family in Sheikh Ijlin neighborhood in Gaza City, and completely destroyed it; meanwhile, nearby houses sustained severe damage, but no causalities were reported.
Moreover, IOF’s warplanes launched several airstrikes on military sites and empty and agricultural lands across the Gaza Strip.
PCHR’s fieldworkers and lawyers continue to document and investigate all these incidents as well as monitoring violations caused by the ongoing attacks, which IOF declared would take some time.
PCHR fears that there will be more civilian casualties in an area considered among the most densely populated areas in the world and where there is not any form of protection, including public and private shelters or even safe corridors. PCHR brings to mind that in recent offensives on the Strip, civilians and civilian objects were always under IOF’s attacks as a way of exerting pressure on the Palestinian armed groups.
PCHR emphasizes that these airstrikes violate the principles of necessity and proportionality while conducting directed attacks against densely populated areas and use of weapons based on collective punishment is a grave breach of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and amount to war crimes.
PCHR calls upon the international community to take immediate action in order to stop the Israeli crimes and avoid any further deterioration of the situation.
