Israeli airstrikes and gunfire killed at least 30 people in and around Gaza City, local health authorities said, as a 20-boat humanitarian aid flotilla carrying activists including Greta Thunberg set sail from Barcelona for the stricken territory.
Authorities said the toll from Israeli tank and gunfire included 13 people who died trying to get food near a distribution site in the Gaza Strip, two in a house in Gaza City and 15, including five children, in a strike on a residential building on Saturday.
Residents of Sheikh Radwan, one of Gaza City’s largest neighbourhoods, told reporters the area had been under Israeli tank shelling and airstrikes throughout Saturday, overnight and on Sunday morning, forcing many families to flee.
Witnesses said Israeli troops opened fire on crowds in the Netzarim corridor, an Israeli military zone bisecting Gaza. “We were trying to get food but were met with the occupation’s bullets,” said Ragheb Abu Lebda, from Nuseirat. “It’s a death trap.”
Rezik Salah, a father-of-two from Sheikh Radwan, told Reuters that Israeli troops were now “crawling into the heart of the city … from the east, north and south, while bombing those areas from the air and ground to scare people to leave”.
The actors Susan Sarandon, Liam Cunningham and Eduard Fernández were among campaigners from more than 40 countries onboard the Sumud (“Resilience” or “Perseverance” in Arabic) flotilla when it sailed on Sunday afternoon.
Organisers said what they called the biggest humanitarian flotilla to Gaza so far, also carrying several European political figures including the former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau, aimed to “break the illegal siege of Gaza” and “open a humanitarian corridor to end the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people”.
Dozens of other boats from Greece, Italy, Tunisia and other Mediterranean ports are due to join in the crossing next week. Israel has already blocked two attempts by activists to deliver aid by ship to the coastal territory, intercepting vessels offshore in June and July.
Thousands of supporters flocked to the pier in the Catalan capital, some wearing kaffiyehs and chanting “Free Palestine” and “Boycott Israel”. The boats setting sail ranged from run-down old yachts to commercial vessels.
“The story here is how people are being deliberately deprived of the very basic means to survive,” Thunberg said.
Cunningham called the flotilla “an indication of the world’s failure to uphold international law and humanitarian law … and a shameful, shameful period in the history of our world”.
Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, confirmed on Sunday that Abu Ubaida, the spokesperson for the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, had been killed in a joint operation with the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service in Gaza.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas. However, the group did confirm the death of Mohammed Sinwar, its presumed leader in Gaza, more than three months after Israel said it had identified his body in a tunnel in central Gaza.
The Barcelona flotilla’s departure came two days after the Israeli military ended temporary pauses in the area that had allowed for some aid deliveries. Gaza City was a “dangerous combat zone”, the military said in justification for its decision.
In Jerusalem, Israeli officials said Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet would meet on Sunday evening to discuss the next stages of the planned offensive to seize Gaza City, although a full-scale offensive is not expected to start for weeks.
Israel has said it aims to evacuate the civilian population before moving more ground forces in. Mirjana Spoljaric of the Red Cross said such a move would provoke a massive population displacement that no other part of the Gaza Strip would be able to absorb.
About half of Gaza’s more than 2 million residents are sheltering in Gaza City, local sources estimate, although thousands are believed to have left or to be trying to leave, to seek refuge in more central and southern areas of the territory.
Large crowds in Tel Aviv demonstrated against the war on Saturday night and the families of hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza protested outside the homes of Israeli cabinet ministers on Sunday morning.
The war began with a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023 in which about 1,200 people – mostly civilians – were killed and 251 taken hostage. Forty-seven hostages are still being held in Gaza, about 20 of whom are believed to be alive.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 63,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Gaza, considered reliable by the UN. It has left much of Gaza in ruins and plunged it into a humanitarian crisis.
The UN this month declared a state of famine in the territory, saying 500,000 people faced “catastrophic” conditions.
The Israeli army said on Sunday it had carried out a strike on a site run by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. “The existence of the site and the activity within it constitute a violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon,” it said.
With Reuters and Agence France-Presse
