Palestinian presidency condemns Israel's attack on displaced Palestinians’ tents in Al-Mawasi

By Awad Rjoub

RAMALLAH, Palestine (AA) – Israel’s deadly attack on displaced Palestinians’ tents in Khan Younis constitutes a “continuation of its genocidal offensive” on the Palestinians in the embattled Gaza Strip, said the Palestinian presidency on Saturday.

Israel’s Saturday attack on Al-Mawasi area in the southern Gaza Strip killed more than 71 Palestinians and injured 289 others, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

“The US administration bears responsibility for this heinous massacre, which claimed the lives of hundreds of our children, women, and elderly,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the official spokesman for President Mahmoud Abbas, said in a statement quoted by the state’s news agency Wafa.

He added that the US “persists in violating all international legitimacy resolutions by constantly providing financial and military support to this (Israeli) occupation, which commits bloody massacres against our people every day.”

Abu Rudeineh called on the UN Security Council and the international community “to intervene immediately to stop these bloody massacres and compel the occupation authorities to immediately cease all these actions that violate all international legitimacy resolutions.”

Israel, flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.

More than 38,000 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and over 88,000 injured, according to local health authorities.

Over nine months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.

*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala​​​​​​​