Israel attacks international flotilla while killing hundreds in Gaza
Nora Barrows-Friedman Rights and Accountability3 October 2025
Palestinians, forced to flee their homes in northern Gaza following heavy Israeli attacks and expulsion orders, set up makeshift tents along the central coastal area of Gaza, 30 September.
Omar Ashtawy APA imagesThe following is from the news roundup during the 2 October livestream. Watch the entire episode here.
Israel has killed at least 429 Palestinians and injured more than 1,500 between 24 September and 1 October, according to official records from the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.
The Israeli army has continued to intensify its attacks on northern Gaza, and Gaza City in particular.
On 27 September, journalist Saleh Aljafarawi documented Israeli helicopter gunships and drone artillery firing heavily in the north.
The Mecca residential tower in western Gaza City was also bombed by the Israeli army on 29 September. Journalist Khames Alrefi captured the explosion on video.
James Elder, the spokesperson for the UN children’s agency UNICEF, recorded himself at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza on 26 September as children poured into the emergency room with injuries from Israeli quadcopter fire.
Those attacks include strikes on the tents of displaced families, residential units and inside refugee camps.
Reporter Belal Abu Amer captured this clip of the aftermath of Israeli airstrikes on the Abu Dahrouj family in Nuseirat refugee camp on 26 September.
In addition, the UN says, the Israeli military has reportedly launched airstrikes from drones, as well as fired artillery and live gunfire “against those gathering firewood, especially in northern [central] Gaza, causing dozens of casualties. Israel has completely blocked the entry of cooking gas since 2 March 2025, forcing people to rely on wood, mostly derived from flammable debris from destroyed buildings and broken furniture, as the only available source of fuel for cooking.”
As part of Israel’s stated and open intention to expel all Palestinians from Gaza City and elsewhere in the north, the Israeli army has closed al-Rashid street, the main north-south artery along the coast for traffic going in and out of Gaza City.
Our contributor Mohammad Asad recorded this clip on Wednesday as the Israelis announced the closure of al-Rashid street.
Israeli war minister Israel Katz boasted that Gaza is now formally divided into north and south, and the closure is intended “to tighten the encirclement around Gaza City,” requiring anyone who leaves southward to pass through Israeli army checkpoints.
The Gaza government media office stated that “this arbitrary measure falls within the framework of the occupation’s ongoing policy of oppression, blockade and genocide against our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.”
Hospitals bombed
Israel continues to bomb hospitals and the areas surrounding them.
On 30 September, reporter Saed Hezballah filmed the Israeli army firing gas bombs near Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
Photojournalist Mahmoud Aliwa filmed workers transporting the bodies and burying them inside a large gravesite next to the hospital, as drones buzzed overhead.
Israel bombed the grounds of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital on Wednesday for the 15th time, according to the Gaza government media office, which said that Israel targeted “a group of displaced citizens within the walls of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central Gaza Strip.”
Two people “had come to the hospital for treatment and were subjected to bombing near the new internal medicine department.”
This criminal bombing, the media office added, “resulted in serious injuries and extensive material damage, and posed a direct threat to the lives of dozens of patients inside the hospital. It also endangered the lives of more than 70 journalists and media professionals, as the bombing occurred just meters away from them while they were covering the events and developments of genocide, aggression and forced displacement.”
Israel bombed Al Helou International Hospital in Gaza City on 28 September. Journalist Hassan Salem filmed this clip, exploring the hospital in the aftermath of the attacks.
Ismail al-Thawabta, the director of the health ministry’s media office, told Turkey’s Anadolu Agency that the Israeli army shelled the hospital with two missiles, making entry to or exit from the hospital impossible.
“Doctors and patients inside the hospital are living in a state of terror and severe fear, which has been worsened by the occupation’s deliberate cutoff of the hospital’s internet network to isolate it from the outside world and suspend medical services for civilians,” al-Thawabta said.
People recovering from complex orthopedic surgeries were captured on video fleeing the hospital in wheelchairs.
The Sameer Project, a mutual aid organization in Gaza, filmed people after they were forced out of the hospital by the Israeli army, amid quadcopter fire, shelling and sniper attacks. One man says that there is no place for him to go, and that Israeli military vehicles kept advancing toward the hospital.
Mahmoud Basal, the spokesperson for Gaza’s civil defense, said on 1 October that Israeli forces directly targeted their staff with a drone while they were on a humanitarian rescue mission at al-Falah school in al-Zaytoun neighborhood in Gaza City, where displaced families had been sheltering.
Basal said that seven civil defense personnel were injured, and rescue worker Monther Raed al-Dahshan was killed.
“The person you see in this shroud is a human being,” Basal said, standing over the body of his colleague, “who has the right to live, who has the right to get married, who has the right to live like any other human being in the world. But the occupation has deprived him of the most basic right in existence, which is the right to live. We will continue this humanitarian service because it is truly humanitarian to serve our people.”
On 29 September, a nurse at Nasser Medical Complex, Marwan Abedeen, was shot in the head as he stood in the doorway of a room inside the hospital. Journalist Hussein Khreis filmed this clip.
Another attack on medical services injuredparamedic Omar Abu al-Mazzeh on 29 September, while he and rescue crews were working to evacuate wounded people from under the rubble of a house in western Gaza City, and the Israeli army bombed the same area again.
This clip, from Gaza24 Live, was recorded just after the attack on the rescue workers.
The home belonged to family members of the Hasira clan, who were targeted along with other local families after Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency began pressuring them to cooperate with its operations in Gaza.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor says that it gathered testimonies by families who were “forced to choose between remaining under siege and bombardment with no shelter, food or medicine, and forced displacement into unknown conditions lacking basic life necessities, all under explicit threats of death if they refused Israeli orders.”
These testimonies, Euro-Med adds, “show a deliberate policy to break civilian will by using fear and destruction as instruments of subjugation.”
This is a dangerous policy of extortion by Israeli forces against families in the Gaza Strip, the rights group says.
“What began as individual extortion has escalated into a systematic, collective practice aimed at dismantling Palestinian social fabric by forcing people to betray their communities and subordinating survivors to survival conditions that destroy communal identity and resilience.
“The pressure has shifted from targeting individuals to organized collective extortion that places entire families before a horrific equation: join militias created by Israel or face persecution, mass killing, starvation and forced expulsion, a coordinated attempt to eliminate Palestinian society or reduce it to submission under occupation control.”
One massacre, Euro-Med states, carried out on 27 September against the Bakr family in Beach refugee camp that killed nine family members, including children, “occurred one day after the family refused an Israeli demand to remain in place on the condition that its members form and serve in a local militia aligned with the army, similar to the Abu Shabab gang established east of Rafah.”
Euro-Med’s field team reported that Israeli forces “have begun forming similar groups in multiple other areas of Gaza, including south Khan Younis, east Shujaiya and Beit Lahia in the north.”
Starvation deaths
Starvation is continuing to kill Palestinians across Gaza. On Wednesday, the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said that it had recorded two more deaths due to malnutrition, including a child, over a 24-hour period, bringing the total recorded number of starvation deaths to 455, including 151 children.
And local infrastructure agencies in Gaza say that Israeli attacks are further depriving Palestinians of clean water. Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili reported that more than 75 percent of Gaza’s central water wells are out of service because of Israeli attacks, and The Electronic Intifada’s contributor Asem Alnabih of the Gaza Municipality told Al Jazeera that people are getting less than a quarter of their daily water needs.
Journalists killed
Israel killed at least three more journalists in Gaza this week.
On Saturday, the Gaza government media office confirmed that Mohammed al-Dayeh of the Palestinian Media Center was killed.
The media office also confirmed that Sami Daoud, who worked as a reporter for Rawafed TV, was killed on Tuesday.
With these deaths, Israel has killed at least 254 reporters and media workers since October 2023.
Israel hijacks Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza
From Wednesday evening into Friday morning, in international waters where Israel has no jurisdiction, Israeli naval ships blocked, arrested and kidnapped hundreds of activists aboard the 44 boats of the Global Sumud Flotilla. Some were attacked by Israeli water cannons as they tried to evade Israeli naval hijackings and continued toward Gaza’s shores.
Footage from the Anas al-Sharif boat, which was hijacked by Israeli soldiers early Thursday morning and was named after the Al Jazeera journalist who was assassinated by Israel in August, shows Israeli soldiers taking over the boat and disabling the live camera feed.
Earlier on Wednesday, just days after it announcedthat it was accompanying the flotilla with a naval ship, the Spanish government withdrew and turned its vessel back, saying that it had respect for the humanitarian mission, but that it urged the flotilla to avoid confrontation with Israel.
Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who was aboard one of the first boats to be intercepted, the Alma, recorded this clip just before Israeli soldiers boarded the boat and abducted everyone aboard.
Highlighting resilience
And now, as we always do, we wanted to highlight people expressing joy, determination and resilience across Gaza and around the world.
We go back to the Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza, where activists on one of the boats sang a version of the anti-fascist Italian song “Bella Ciao” just before the boat was hijacked by Israeli soldiers in international waters.
And Italian union workers and activists who promised to shut down the country once again in a general strike if the flotilla was impeded, began their mass protests and strikes on Wednesday evening.
Giovani Palestinesi D’Italia, the Palestinian youth of Italy movement, uploaded this video from Rome on Wednesday evening.
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