Palestinian woman who has had 60 family members killed says the world has failed Gaza
A young Palestinian woman who has lost more than 60 members of her family in Israeli bombardments has said the world is failing Gaza.
Speaking from a cramped house in the southernmost part of the enclave, 26-year-old Aseel Mousa said her home had been destroyed and her family decimated.
“While the whole world was celebrating New Year, we were being targeted and killed by Israel,” Ms Mousa told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“I [have been] waiting for the world to stand for its responsibility and I was waiting for the international community to intervene to help Gaza and to stop this genocide. Actually the whole world has failed Gaza, has failed the children of Gaza.”
Ms Mousa is one of hundreds of thousands of people who have lost relatives before fleeing to Rafah, which borders Egypt in southern Gaza, as they look to escape the Israeli air strikes and ground operations.
Israel started the bombardment of Gaza in the wake of a Hamas attack inside Israel on 7 October that killed 1,200 people and saw 240 others taken hostage. Air strikes have been backed up by a ground assault and a blockade that has left food, water, fuel and medical supplies running short inside the besieged territory.
As the war nears its fourth month, international pressure on Israel to protect the lives of Palestinian civilians has failed to significantly slow the death toll, while Israel maintains that it is the fault of Hamas for using its own people as human shields.
Humanitarian organisations are now warning that the mass displacement of people is leading to the spread of dangerous diseases.
Health officials in hamas-run Gaza say israeli strikes has killed at least 22,313 people and injured more than 57,000. In the new year, the death toll has already risen by several hundred; some 491 Palestinians have been killed since 31 December, according to the ministry.
Ms Mousa said the majority of her family, many of whom were women and children, were killed during Israeli airstrikes on al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza.
It was the second place to which they had moved to escape the bombing, having fled their home in the northwest after Israel’s bombing campaign destroyed tens of thousands of homes in that region. She has since fled to Rafah.
More than 1.9 million of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced by Israel’s aerial assault and subsequent three-stage ground offensive in the region, according to the United Nations. Most of those that have fled are from the north, where Israel began its offensive. They have since moved into the south of the Strip and, more recently, the centre.
The Israeli military said in its daily briefing that “intensive battles” with militants were continuing in Gaza on Wednesday in the southern city of Khan Younis.
