Israel marked the begining of 2025 by killing at least 12 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, the Gaza Health Ministry said on Wednesday.
One strike hit a home in the Jabaliya area of northern Gaza, the heavily destroyed part of the territory, where Israel has waged its brutal attacks since early October. Gaza's Health Ministry said seven people were killed, including a woman and four children, and at least a dozen other people were wounded.
Another strike overnight in the built-up Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza killed a woman and a child, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which received the bodies.
"Are you celebrating? Enjoy as we die. For a year and a half, we have been dying," said a man carrying the body of a child in the flashing lights of emergency vehicles.
A third strike in the southern city of Khan Younis killed three people, according to Nasser Hospital and the European Hospital, which received the bodies.
Israel's genocide on Gaza has so far killed over 45,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. More than half of those killed are women and children. Israel has also killed over 190 journalists and at least 1000 healthcare workers ion Gaza.
According to the Palestinian Media Centre, over 800 infants were killed by Israel before they completed their first year, since the beginning of its genocidal war on Gaza.
Last week, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), in a statement on X, stated, “One child gets killed every hour. These are not numbers. These are lives cut short. Killing children cannot be justified.”
The genocidal war has caused widespread destruction and displaced some 90% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million, many of them multiple times.
Hundreds of thousands live in tents on the coast as winter brings frequent rainstorms and temperatures drop below 10 degrees Celsius (50 F) at night. At least seven infants and another person have died of hypothermia, amid Israel's continuous blockade of humanitarian aid into the long-besieged territory.
Many displaced Palestinians in central Gaza rely on charity kitchens as their sole food provider amid restrictions on aid and skyrocketing prices. AP footage showed a long line of children waiting for rice, the only item served at the kitchen in Deir al-Balah on Wednesday.
"Some of those kitchens close because they don't receive aid, and others distribute little amounts of food and its not enough," said Umm Adham Shaheen, displaced from Gaza City.