GAZA (Palestine Foundation Information Center) The Israeli army committed a horrific massacre against Palestinian civilians in Gaza City trying to access communications and internet services, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor revealed in a new statement issued Wednesday.
This adds another crime to the long list of crimes the Israeli army has committed against the civilian population in the Gaza Strip since the military invasion began last October, the rights group said.
The Israeli army continues to repeatedly target and kill Palestinian civilians in this capacity, including journalists, as they attempt to access communications and internet services to communicate with their families or employers by directly targeting them with aerial bombardment or snipers and drones in various areas of the Gaza Strip, without posing any threat or danger, the statement reads.
“In the heart of Gaza City, on Wednesday afternoon, an Israeli drone fired a missile at a group of Palestinian civilians gathered at an “internet distribution point” on “Al-Jalaa” Street at the “Ayoun” Hospital intersection. The missile killed at least four people, including a child, whose body parts were recovered. There were fifteen more injured, some with moderate to severe wounds.”
The father of one of the victims of the Israeli bombing, Hassan Saeed Barakat, told the Euro-Med team that dozens of people had gathered to access Internet service and communicate with their families and relatives when an Israeli drone launched a surprise missile attack that directly targeted a tent used as an Internet distribution point, causing a massive explosion.
Instead of accessing the Internet via electronic cards, Palestinian civilians are turning to random distribution points and high places in an attempt to access communication networks due to the systematic and widespread destruction by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, including the destruction of Palestinian communications exchanges and mobile phone networks’ transmission stations.
In order to hide the truth, impede press coverage of the crimes, and prevent locals from transmitting information and communicating with one another, the Israeli army periodically targets civilians in besieged areas while trying to access communications and internet services, the statement said.
Israel deliberately destroyed the only terrestrial network in the Gaza Strip and the aerial transmission stations of mobile phone networks located on building roofs. This resulted in the majority of the Gaza Strip’s residents being unable to access the Internet or communicate, forcing them to look for other sources of information. It is not easy to secure its operating requirements.
Since the Israeli military invasion started on October 7, Israel has shut off communications and the Internet from the Gaza Strip no fewer than thirteen times due to direct attacks on civilian telecommunications infrastructure, targeting electricity, and preventing the supply of fuel required to run generators.
