Dozens of Palestinians killed in recent Israeli attacks

They say an Israeli airstrike killed five Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and at least 20 people, including 16 women and children, were killed in the Gaza Strip.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said at least 19 people were killed in an attack on a tent camp in an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone on Tuesday.

The ministry estimates that more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war between Israel and Hamas began. However, the count does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

The war has caused enormous destruction and around 90 percent of the 2.3 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip have had to leave their homes, often several times.

In their October 7 attack that sparked the war, Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Another 250 were abducted and around 100 are still being held. Around a third of them are believed to be dead.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military said two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven others injured when their helicopter crashed in the southern Gaza Strip.

The military said the helicopter crash overnight was not caused by enemy fire and was currently under investigation.

The helicopter was tasked with evacuating wounded soldiers from Gaza for treatment in Israeli hospitals.

Since the start of the ground offensive in the Gaza Strip at the end of October, 340 Israeli soldiers have been killed. According to the military, at least 50 of them died in accidents in the Gaza Strip and not in fighting with Palestinian militants.

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden said he was “outraged and deeply saddened” by the death of an American activist who was shot by Israeli forces while protesting against settlements in the occupied West Bank, calling it “completely unacceptable”.

“There must be comprehensive accountability,” Biden said in a statement released early Wednesday. “And Israel must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again.”

The Israeli military said on Tuesday that Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old Seattle activist who also held Turkish citizenship, was likely shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by its soldiers and that it had launched a criminal investigation.

Her relatives responded with sharp criticism. In a statement, they said they were “deeply insulted by the suggestion that her killing by a trained sniper was in any way unintentional.”