Palestinian journalist Islam Al-Komi was killed in an Israeli artillery strike that targeted his home and several inhabited houses in the Al-Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City on Monday evening, a journalist close to the scene told Al-Manassa.
The attack also killed a woman, while injuring six others, who were evacuated with difficulty after more than an hour of continuous shelling.
Al-Komi had been working for several local media outlets in recent years, when the war disrupted his work. He went on to be repeatedly displaced alongside his wife and two children.
Days before he was killed, Al-Komi pleaded on Facebook, asking for help in finding a safe place for his family after Israeli threats of a wide-scale ground invasion.
Al-Komi's death brought the number of journalists killed by Israeli occupation forces to 239 since the beginning of the war on Gaza, according to the Gaza Media Office.
The intensified shelling in Al-Sabra forced dozens of families to flee under fire, with Israeli drones shooting at houses, a witness told Al-Manassa. The occupation deliberately targeted civilian homes and pursued residents in the streets for more than an hour, the witness added.
The witness, who requested anonymity, said that artillery fire escalated again after midnight, striking more than a dozen houses in the Abu Sharia area of Al-Sabra after military vehicles advanced west from Al-Zaytoun neighborhood and positioned south of Al-Sabra.
An ambulance worker told Al-Manassa they received dozens of distress calls from residents under fire. “Ambulances tried to reach the area, but due to the heavy shelling and gunfire, we had to coordinate with residents to move the injured toward northern Al-Sabra,” the medic said.
“We waited for the wounded at the edge of the neighborhood. Some arrived carried on shoulders or on animal-drawn carts. We transferred more than 20 wounded and three people killed to Al-Saraya field hospital and Al-Shifa Hospital,” added the medic.
Another witness told Al-Manassa that many victims remained trapped in homes and on streets hit by the Israeli occupation army, with neighbors and rescue crews unable to reach them. He said the occupation’s vehicles only entered Al-Sabra at dawn, though artillery shelling continued through the night and spread into surrounding areas.
In Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, Israeli occupation forces launched airstrikes at dawn on three separate tents, killing seven people—including four children and a woman—and injuring more than 25, according to a medical source at Nasser Medical Complex.
A journalist in Khan Younis told Al-Manassa that one strike hit a tent for displaced people in the Fish Fresh area, southwest of the city, killing two children and their mother. Two other tents in central Khan Younis were separately struck, killing two children and a young man.
The three strikes, the journalist added, on displacement tents coincided with artillery bombardment of the Shakoush area in southwest Khan Younis, as well as shelling of Al-Amal neighborhood and near Asdaa Prison, where one young man was killed and others were injured.
The overnight bombardment also hit a displacement tent in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, killing four people and injuring three children, who were transferred to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, according to a medical source who spoke to Al-Manassa.
The same source said four Palestinians who worked to secure the entry of commercial trucks through the Kissufim settlement crossing east of Deir Al-Balah were shot and killed by Israeli occupation forces on Monday evening.
On March 18, Israel had rejected the continuation of the second stage of a truce that had been agreed upon in January and was supposed to last until the end of the aggression on Gaza.
Israel resumed its war on the enclave, and mediators have so far failed to secure another truce or a comprehensive agreement to end the war, despite ongoing negotiations.
