As Gaza Genocide Rages, Netanyahu Flies to U.S.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (KI) — Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip martyred at least 24 people, including over a dozen women and children, local health officials said Sunday, as the occupying regime’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu headed to the United States to meet with President Donald Trump about the war.

Israel last month ended its ceasefire with Hamas and renewed its air and ground invasion, carrying out waves of strikes and seizing territory. It has also blocked the import of food, fuel and humanitarian aid for over a month to the coastal territory heavily reliant on outside assistance.
“Stocks are getting low and the situation is becoming desperate,” the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said on social media.
The latest Israeli strikes overnight into Sunday hit a tent and a house in the southern city of Khan Younis, killing five men, five women and five children, according to Nasser Hospital, which received the bodies.
A female journalist was among those killed. “My daughter is innocent. She had no involvement, she loved journalism and adored it,” said her mother, Amal Kaskeen.
The body of one child, 1 1/2-year old, took up just one end of an emergency stretcher.
“Trump wants to end the Gaza issue. He is in a hurry, and that is clear from this morning,” asserted Muhammad Abdel-Hadi, cousin of a woman killed.
Israeli shelling killed at least four people in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. And the bodies of five people, including a child and three women, arrived at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
There is anger inside Israeli settlements over the war’s resumption and its effects on remaining captives in Gaza. Families of captives along with some of those recently
 freed from Gaza and their supporters on Saturday urged Trump to help ensure the fighting ends.
Netanyahu on Monday will meet with Trump for the second time since Trump began his latest term in January. The Zionist prime minister said they would discuss the war and the new 17% tariff imposed on Israel, part of a sweeping global decision by the new U.S. administration.
The U.S., a supposed mediator in ceasefire efforts along with Egypt and Qatar, expressed support for Israel’s resumption of the war last month.
Hundreds of Palestinians since then have been martyred, among them 15 medics whose bodies were recovered only a week later. Israel’s military this weekend backtracked on its account of what happened in the incident, captured in part on video, that caused anger by Red Cross and Red Crescent and UN officials.
On March 23, 15 paramedics and emergency responders were shot dead while on a rescue mission and their bodies were later discovered in a shallow grave a week later by officials from the United Nations and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS). 
Initially, the military claimed that soldiers opened fire on vehicles approaching their position in the dark without emergency lights or markings, deeming them “suspicious”. The Israeli military claimed the PRCS vehicles were being used by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
However, video footage recovered from the mobile phone of one of the victims and released by the PRCS contradicted this account. The video showed emergency workers in uniform, operating clearly marked ambulances and fire trucks with lights on, being fired upon by soldiers.
Red Crescent and UN officials have said 17 paramedics and emergency workers had been dispatched to respond to reports of injuries from Israeli air strikes.
Fifty-nine captives are still held in Gaza — 24 believed to be alive — after most of the rest were released in ceasefires or other deals.
Israel’s onslaught since October 2023 has martyred at least 50,695 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It says another 115,338 people have been wounded.