Hamas And Other Palestinian Resistance Groups Have Categorically Denounced The Latest Wave Of Israeli Strikes On The Gaza Strip As “A Bloody Zionist Escalation And Full-Fledged War Crimes.”

GAZA CITY – By the time the sun rose over the Gaza Strip on a quiet Saturday morning, Dua Mohammad Suleiman Rahim had already been rushed through the hospital corridors, her small body unable to withstand the trauma of Israeli gunfire that had riddled her days earlier west of Deir al-Balah. Her death was not an anomaly but a single data point in a brutal, accelerating campaign that Palestinian factions, legal experts, and humanitarian organisations are now categorically labelling “Full-Fledged War Crimes”. Across the dusty, rubble-strewn streets of the enclave, from Beit Lahia to Khan Younis, a grim pattern has emerged: a so-called American-brokered ceasefire that has killed hundreds, a systematic decapitation of civil police forces, and an international diplomatic architecture that observers say is enabling mass suffering rather than halting it.

A Bloody 48 Hours: The Human Toll.

The final full week of April 2026 has been one of the deadliest periods since the “ceasefire” took effect in October 2025. In a devastating wave of airstrikes and artillery shelling on Friday, April 24, at least 13 Palestinians were killed, and more than 32 were wounded, according to local medical authorities and civil defence teams. The attacks were indiscriminate in geography and target. In the Al-Mawasi area west of Khan Younis, an Israeli drone blasted a police vehicle that had just been dispatched to resolve a domestic dispute. The strike incinerated the car and killed at least eight people, including unarmed officers and civilian bystanders. Witnesses reported a scene of absolute carnage, with onlookers gathering around the charred skeleton of the vehicle in the middle of a sprawling tent camp. “The war never stopped… this is not fair,” Mohammed Al-Qassas, the brother of one of the slain men, told Agence France-Presse at Al-Shifa hospital’s morgue, weeping over the bodies.

Simultaneously, in the northern Gaza Strip, Israeli artillery shelled residential homes near the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia. A mother and her two children were killed in the strike that obliterated the structure of a building belonging to the Al-Tanani family. The horror of the attack was distilled in a desperate viral video showing an injured girl, Naya Al-Tanani, being frantically transported on a bicycle to reach medical care amid the total collapse of the local healthcare system; she later died from her wounds.

In a third egregious strike, an Israeli aircraft targeted a police patrol near the Sheikh Radwan police station in Gaza City, killing two officers, Police Captain Imran Omar Al-Lad’a and Police Lieutenant Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Qassas, and severely wounding two others. The Gaza Interior Ministry confirmed the deaths, denouncing the attacks as a brazen assault on civilian law enforcement. “The continued silence of international organisations… regarding the targeting of civilian police officers constitutes complicity with the Israeli occupation,” the ministry stated, emphasising that the police force merely provides essential services to civilians and there is “absolutely no justification” for targeting it.

Dismantling Order: A “Pre-Planned Approach” To Chaos.

The decision by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to strike a patrol and a vehicle resolving a family dispute is being parsed not merely as a kinetic military action but as a deliberate, pre-planned sociological warfare strategy. The Gaza Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) issued a blistering condemnation, describing the escalation as a “recurring pattern aimed at weakening the structure of public order and creating conditions conducive to chaos and lawlessness”. Since the ceasefire began, the GCHR has documented a systematic spike in Israeli attacks on security checkpoints and officers performing civilian duties. This has created a vacuum enabling armed gangs and collaborators to loot humanitarian aid, kidnap civilians, and sow terror in displacement areas.

This analysis is supported by the broader context of Israel’s war on Gaza’s civil infrastructure. Palestinian authorities report that Israel has killed approximately 2,800 police officers since October 2023. Israeli media have reported that Tel Aviv has adjusted its operational policies to make no distinction between Hamas military operatives and civil police personnel, describing these operations under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s doctrine of “disarmament the hard way”.

In a joint statement, Palestinian resistance factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, articulated this view sharply: “Targeting security checkpoints and police patrols… constitutes a full-fledged war crime, and explicitly shows a pre-planned approach to step up violence”. Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem described the massacres as “further evidence of the ongoing war of genocide,” while the group’s official statement decried the “unprecedented bloody and fascist approach” of Netanyahu’s government.

The Phantom Mandate: The Failure Of The “Board Of Peace”.

At the heart of the diplomatic paralysis is the U.S.-led “Board of Peace,” a body established by President Donald Trump to oversee the transition and reconstruction of Gaza. Yet, multiple new investigations and reports this weekend indicate that the mechanism is in a state of advanced collapse. The Board’s 12-member Gaza technocratic committee is reportedly on the verge of disintegration; at least four members have submitted their resignations in protest at Israel’s refusal to allow them to enter the Strip or assume governing functions, effectively stranding the committee in Cairo.

Hamas has outright accused the Board of Peace of failing to compel Israel to halt violations. Qassem stated that the body’s impotence “reveals the increasing failure” to stop the violence, labelling the ongoing attacks a “war of extermination”. This comes amid a crisis of funding and legitimacy. A Reuters report noted that the Board had secured less than $1 billion of the $17 billion pledged for Gaza’s reconstruction, delaying any meaningful recovery even as Israel maintains a stranglehold on aid deliveries.

Commentators argue that diplomacy has devolved into a form of coercion. A blistering analysis in Al-Quds noted that the Board’s pressure is paradoxically directed at the occupied rather than the occupier: “Why should Palestinians disarm while Israel continues to bomb, occupy, blockade, and control Gaza’s borders? … The death toll since the truce began exposes the fraud even more starkly”.

2,400 Violations And A Mockery Of Humanitarian Law:

The numbers laid out by the Gaza Government Media Office paint a stark picture of a truce that exists only on paper. As of mid-April, the office had documented 2,400 distinct Israeli violations of the ceasefire agreement. These encompass targeted strikes, arrests, deliberate blockades, and starvation policies. The human cost of these violations is staggering. While the death toll fluctuates slightly depending on the reporting source, Gaza’s Health Ministry reports that between 972 and 984 Palestinians have been killed since the truce began on October 10, 2025, with an additional 2,235 injured. The overall death toll since October 7, 2023, has now surpassed a catastrophic 100,000 souls, with more than 377,000 wounded and maimed, a figure representing over 7% of the enclave’s total population.

The blockade of essential supplies has turned malnutrition and exposure into weapons of war. Save the Children International CEO Inger Ashing delivered a damning verdict on the humanitarian scorecard half a year into the ceasefire: “At least two children a day have been killed or injured in the six months since the ceasefire for Gaza was agreed… This is not peace for children in Gaza”. The charity has documented infants and toddlers dying from hypothermia in flimsy tents and children being crushed under collapsed structures due to the lack of heavy equipment to clear rubble, a direct result of Israel blocking the entry of reconstruction materials. More than 4,000 children urgently need medical evacuation, facing what Save the Children calls a “slow death sentence” at the closed Rafah border.

Unjustifiable Inaction: Silence As Complicity:

In their blistering statements, Hamas and allied resistance groups framed the ongoing slaughter not just as an Israeli crime but as a catastrophic failure of the international community. “The escalation by the administration of war criminal Netanyahu in bombings and killings across Gaza represents a clear failure of the role of mediators, guarantor states and the international community to curb the brutal Israeli killing machine,” Hamas declared.

This sentiment is amplified by analysts who note that the United States and its Western allies continue to provide diplomatic cover and military hardware with no comparable urgency to address the staggering body count. The Al-Quds analysis concluded that Washington has turned the ceasefire into “a mechanism for extending siege, occupation, and Palestinian suffering under the language of peace,” noting that Israel still occupies roughly 53% of Gaza behind the so-called “Yellow Line”.

As of this morning, with the death of Dua Rahim, the bloodshed only continued. Casualty statistics in Gaza, often reduced to sterile spreadsheets for diplomatic briefings, carry a sharp emotional weight on the ground. They are memorialised not just in hospital logs but in viral social media posts capturing the last moments of children like Naya Al-Tanani, transported to a nonexistent ICU on a bicycle, a silent indictment of a world that Hamas and activists say has left the Palestinians of Gaza to face what the International Court of Justice has already been petitioned to declare a genocide. Israel, for its part, maintained only a brief operational note, claiming that the strikes on Friday “eliminated armed Hamas terrorists” who posed a threat. In a territory where police directing traffic are now classified as military targets, the line between counterinsurgency and collective punishment has, in the eyes of many observers, been permanently erased.

Source: Multiple News Agencies