Israeli strikes kill eight Palestinians across Gaza, torching shelter tents
Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians across Gaza City in three separate airstrikes and shot dead another young man south of Khan Younis on Tuesday evening, medical officials said, in attacks that set ablaze makeshift tent encampments and left dozens of displaced families without shelter.
A medical source in the Gaza Ministry of Health told Al Manassa that the aerial bombardments destroyed and torched multiple tents housing families who had already fled their homes, stripping them of their remaining possessions.
In the latest strikes in Gaza City, the Israeli military fired a missile from a reconnaissance drone into the rooftop of a displacement center run by the Ministry of Endowments in the Zeitoun neighborhood, southeast of the city. The attack killed a man and his 13-year-old child, and wounded three others, according to a medical source at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.
An eyewitness told Al Manassa that the Israeli military launched the strike without any prior warning or evacuation order, noting that the victims and the wounded were sitting beside their tents on the building’s rooftop, which sheltered dozens of displaced families.
Israeli forces followed that attack by targeting a tent housing displaced people inside the Musa bin Nusayr public school in the Al-Daraj neighborhood of the central Old City, killing a young man and wounding two others, a medical source at Al-Shifa Hospital said.
Both wounded individuals arrived at the hospital in critical condition and entered the intensive care unit, the source explained. The patients required immediate surgical intervention, the source added, but a total absence of essential medical supplies and operational capacity left them facing death within hours or days.
Before sunset on Tuesday, an Israeli reconnaissance drone fired a missile at a group of young men working inside a modern blacksmith workshop in the Tel Al-Hawa neighborhood south of Gaza City, killing three workers and wounding several others. Paramedics transported the casualties to Al-Quds Hospital, operated by the Palestine Red Crescent Society.
Less than two hours after that strike, an Israeli military officer telephoned an area resident and ordered the complete evacuation of civilians from the vicinity ahead of a follow-up bombardment.
Hisham Abdo, a displaced resident, told Al Manassa that the Israeli military granted them no more than 20 minutes to flee before fighter jets fired two missiles into the site. The blast leveled the area and ignited massive fires across surrounding tents.
“By God, I just bought this tent after they forced us to flee from the Al-Tuffah neighborhood,” Abdo cried out, having lost his tent and all personal belongings in the blaze. “All our belongings burned. Where are we supposed to go with our children in the freezing cold?”
Abdo explained that he and six other families had fled eastern Gaza City only recently following the expansion of Israeli military control zones and the westward advance of the designated “yellow line,” which accompanied the detonation of high-explosive demolition blocks and the systematic flattening of residential tracts.
Shireen Al-Suwairki, whose family also lost their tent and possessions in the attack, told Al Manassa: “Just a few days ago I bought clothes for the children. Everything is gone, all burned up. Where do we get the money to buy anything now? We have neither an income nor a roof over our heads.”
In the southern Gaza Strip, a medical source at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis told Al Manassa that Israeli soldiers stationed near a displacement site south of the city shot and killed a young Palestinian man.
Israeli political posturing
On the political front, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement on X affirming ongoing coordination with the United States and the “Board of Peace” to advance US President Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza ceasefire plan.
The statement insisted on the total disarmament of Hamas and the termination of its governance in the Strip before any reconstruction efforts could begin, claiming that the movement had not surrendered any weapons to date and retained administrative control over the population of Gaza.
Netanyahu’s office further accused Hamas of diverting cement intended for civilian housing into military tunnel networks, retooling water pipelines and sewage pumps to manufacture rockets, and seizing humanitarian relief shipments to reinforce its military apparatus.
Netanyahu’s office claimed that, in preparation for the winter season, the Israeli government permitted the entry of more than 91,000 tents, 8,200 trucks loaded with winter relief supplies, and 12 sewage suction tankers, alongside facilitating repairs to local water and wastewater lines.
Hamas issued no immediate response to Netanyahu’s assertions. However, the Israeli claims regarding the delivery of winter aid stand in stark contrast to humanitarian needs that vastly exceed the volume of aid allowed inside the enclave, occurring against the backdrop of continuous bombardment that consumes displaced families’ shelters in fire.
In a report released on Nov. 9, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that heavy rains across the Strip had impacted more than 26,000 families, destroyed or severely damaged thousands of tents, and left internal stockpiles of tents, blankets, and winter clothing almost entirely exhausted.
The UN report pointed out that approximately 150,000 tents procured by humanitarian organizations and international donor states remain stranded outside the borders of the Gaza Strip awaiting clearance for entry, including roughly 117,000 tents held in the Egyptian city of El-Arish, underscoring the severe gap between baseline survival needs and the delivery of critical aid.
The US-backed “Board of Peace” also publicly criticized the ongoing restrictions on the entry of emergency shelter equipment, water materials, and sanitation goods, describing the Israeli response as persistently inadequate.