The Israeli army has shelled hundreds of displaced Palestinians trying to return to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip, as the Tel Aviv regime presses ahead with its genocidal war in the besieged Palestinian territory.
At least five Palestinians, including a woman, were killed and several others injured in Israeli artillery shelling on Sunday.
“Five fatalities, including a woman, and a number of injured people arrived at Al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip,” media outlets quoted medical sources as saying.
The casualties occurred among “the displaced Palestinians who tried to return to the northern Strip via al-Rashid Street,” they added.
Palestinians gathered at al-Rashid Street to cross to the north of Gaza after rumors spread that children and women under the age of 14 were allowed to cross the north in Gaza City.
The Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee said the regime had warned the Palestinians against approaching the Israeli forces invading the northern Gaza Strip.
“The Israeli army does not allow the return of residents, neither through Salah al-Din Street nor through Al-Rashid Street,” he said, “The northern Gaza Strip is still a war zone and we will not allow a return to it.”
Witnesses confirmed that the Israeli army asked them to return to the southern Gaza Strip and fired smoke bombs at them to prevent them from reaching the north.
Israel waged the genocidal war on Gaza after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas carried out a historic operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
The Israeli aggression has so far killed at least 33,700 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
The Tel Aviv regime has imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.
The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
In January, an interim ruling by the International Court of Justice ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
