UPDATE - 5 killed as Israeli army shells hundreds of displaced Palestinians returning to northern Gaza

CHANGES HEADLINE, ADDS DEATH TOLL

By Hosni Nadim

GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) - At least five Palestinians, including a woman, were killed and several others injured on Sunday when the Israeli army shelled hundreds of displaced Palestinians trying to return to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip.

“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,” medical sources told Anadolu.

The casualties occurred among “the displaced Palestinians who tried to return to the northern Strip via Al-Rashid Street,” they added.

An Anadolu correspondent reported that Israeli artillery shelling targeted hundreds of displaced Palestinians during their attempts to return to the northern Gaza Strip.

Earlier on Sunday, the Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee wrote on X: “Reports on Israeli army forces allowing the return of the Palestinian population to the northern Gaza Strip area are false and completely baseless rumors."

“The Israeli army does not allow the return of residents, neither through Salah al-Din Street nor through Al-Rashid Street.”

Adraee warned the Palestinians against approaching the Israeli forces operating in the northern Gaza Strip.

“The northern Gaza Strip is still a war zone and we will not allow a return to it,” he added.

Hundreds of Palestinians are trying to return to northern Gaza via the Al-Rashid Street and very few of them, all of them women and children, succeeded in reaching the northern Gaza Strip, according to an Anadolu correspondent.

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 has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7, 2023 cross-border attack led by Hamas, in which nearly 1,200 people were killed.

More than 33,700 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have since been killed in Gaza, and nearly 76,400 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

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.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

*Writing by Ikram Kouachi