MEDICAL sources on the ground in Gaza have reported that at least 31 Palestinians have been killed today in Israeli attacks.
The murders bring the number of Palestinians reportedly killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza in the past day to 112.
This includes women and children killed in three separate attacks on schools sheltering displaced Palestinians in Gaza City.
Al Jazeera reporter Hani Mahmoud reported: "People inside described how they had seen bodies flying out of balconies or the windows of classrooms in which they were sheltering.
"This is reality. This is what makes us worried. What makes us very scared that death is very imminent now."
It comes as humanitarian group Mercy Corps warned that the crisis in Gaza is escalating as no aid truck has been allowed into the strip for an entire month.
The Palestinian Health Ministry has also confirmed the killing of Yusuf Bakr Zalou, a 17-year-old Palestinian teenager, who was shot by Israeli forces overnight.
The killing took place in a village west of Bethlehem, it has been reported, adding that Israeli soldiers took his body away.
An official from the Palestinian Red Crescent said his team was blocked by Israeli forces from approaching the scene, preventing medics from providing assistance.
Earlier this week, another 17-year-old boy, from the West Bank, died after collapsing in unclear circumstances.
He had been held in an Israeli prison for six months without being charged and became the first Palestinian under 18 to die in Israeli detention, officials said.
Walid Ahmad was a healthy high school student before his arrest in September for allegedly throwing stones at soldiers, his family said.
Rights groups have documented widespread abuse in Israeli detention facilities holding thousands of Palestinians who were rounded up after Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack.
Prison authorities deny any systematic abuse and say they investigate accusations of wrongdoing by prison staff.
But, the Israeli ministry overseeing prisons acknowledges conditions inside detention facilities have been reduced to the minimum level allowed under Israeli law.
Israel’s prison service did not respond to questions about the cause of death.
It said only that a 17-year-old from the West Bank had died in Megiddo Prison, a facility that has previously been accused of abusing Palestinian inmates, “with his medical condition being kept confidential”.
It said it investigates all deaths in detention.
Khalid Ahmad, Walid’s father, said his son was a lively teenager who enjoyed playing football before he was taken from his home in the occupied West Bank during a pre-dawn arrest raid.
Six months later, after several brief court appearances during which no trial date was set, Walid collapsed on March 23 in a prison yard and struck his head, dying soon after, Palestinian officials said, citing witness accounts from other prisoners.
The family believes Walid contracted amoebic dysentery from the poor conditions in the prison, an infection that causes diarrhoea, vomiting, and dizziness — and can be fatal if left untreated.
Israel has rounded up thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, saying it suspects them of militancy.
Many have been held for months without charge or trial in what is known as administrative detention, which Israel justifies as a necessary security measure.
Others are arrested on suspicion of aggression towards soldiers but have their trials continuously delayed as the military and Israel’s security services gather evidence.
