Rights and Accountability 5 September 2025
Israel massacred children and adults at water distribution sites, a bakery and in shelters this week. (Omar Ashtawy / APA Images)
The following is from the news roundup during the 4 September livestream. Watch the entire episode here.
Israel killed at least 571 Palestinians and injured nearly 2,318 between 27 August and 3 September, according to official records from the Ministry of Health in Gaza.
The Israeli army committed massacres in Gaza City and northern Gaza areas, using airstrikes, firebelts, drone attacks and bomb-filled remotely controlled vehicles to destroy residential buildings, ambulances and tent shelters of displaced Palestinian families.
On Saturday, 30 August, Israel bombed a bakery and a tent shelter in al-Nasr neighborhood of Gaza City, killing at least 12 children and adults as they were waiting for bread.
Journalist Mustafa Sarsour captured video of a man in agony as he mourned over the bodies of three small children.
Al-Nasr neighborhood was bombed again on Monday, 1 September.
Reporter Mahmoud Abusalama reported from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, where bodies of Palestinians were brought in by their families on carts and stretchers.
Another massacre of children happened on Tuesday, 2 September, when at least five children were killed while waiting for water in al-Mawasi, in southern Gaza, an area the Israeli army had designated as a so-called safe zone but which it has bombed relentlessly over the course of the last 23 months.
Mahmoud Basal, the spokesperson for Gaza’s civil defense, said that the children “were standing in line to fill up water in the al-Mawasi area, which had been described as ‘safe,’ when the occupation forces directly targeted them, turning their search for life into a new massacre.”
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor stated on 3 September that its field team reviewed several videos published by Israeli soldiers showing them “shooting at Palestinians in displacement camps for amusement or to bet on their accuracy.”
This demonstrates, the rights group explains, “that the shooting is not driven by any specific purpose or military necessity, but rather reflects a deliberate policy aimed at causing maximum civilian deaths and destruction while denying Palestinians any sense of safety.”
The group documented the killing of Ahlam Raed Fayez al-Shaer, 26, a mother of two, by Israeli army gunfire on the morning of 1 September while she was making tea in her tent in al-Mawasi.
Al-Shaer’s father-in-law told Euro-Med Monitor’s team that his daughter-in-law was preparing tea for her two children, Ayman and Karam, when an Israeli quadcopter shot her in the head in front of them. He said his two grandchildren are now orphans.
Humanitarian activist Said Shoaib captured this clip moments after Israeli forces committed a massacre in al-Bureij refugee camp, in central Gaza, on Sunday. The screams of children can be heard as the camera shows images of shredded bodies and injured children.
Israel is using incendiary bombs and grenades to set fires to buildings and tent shelters.
Instagram user Ehab Nuor filmed footage of one such attack earlier in the week, with enormous plumes of flames and smoke enveloping a residential building.
Israeli forces set the tents of displaced families ablaze on Wednesday, 3 September, by dropping grenades on shelters in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City.
A 60-year-old mother of five told Reuters that Sheikh Radwan “is being burned upside-down. The occupation destroyed houses, burned tents, and drones played audio messages ordering people to leave the area.”
“If the takeover of Gaza City isn’t stopped, we might die, and we are not going to forgive anyone who stands and watches without doing anything to prevent our death,” she said.
Israel used incendiary bombs to target cars and ambulances near a clinic in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood on Tuesday.Civil defense worker Mohammed Abu Loay filmed his colleagues as they scrambled for buckets of water, trying to extinguish the flames.
Earlier that day, journalist Mahmoud Abusalama reported from Sheikh Radwan to document the advance of the Israeli army. Abusalama says that during the invasion, along with detonating bomb-filled vehicles to destroy buildings, Israeli snipers have been targeting Palestinians on the streets.“As you can see, bullets are hitting civilians and gunfire is being fired from vehicles and snipers stationed around Sheikh Radwan,” he said.
While she was reporting live earlier this week, Al Jazeera journalist Nour Abu Rokba broke down in tears talking about her mother being forcibly displaced amidst the annihilation of Gaza City.
“Determined to wipe Gaza City off the map”
Israel is determined to wipe Gaza City off the map, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor declared on 1 September. And it is using an arsenal of some of the most destructive tools ever built, with complete impunity.
“The Israeli army is destroying about 300 residential units daily in Gaza City and Jabaliya, using around 15 robots carrying nearly 100 tonnes of explosives,” Euro-Med stated.
“These bombings are taking place at an unprecedented pace, aimed at destroying Gaza City and displacing its residents as part of a dangerous escalation of the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for nearly 23 months.”Euro-Med Monitor’s field team documented the Israeli army’s intensified use of armored, explosive-laden robots to achieve its goal of completely erasing one of Palestine’s oldest and largest cities.
Euro-Med says that at the current rate, the rest of the city could be destroyed within two months, “a timeline that may shorten further given the Israeli army’s massive firepower and the absence of any pressure to halt its crimes against Palestinians.”
After preliminary assessments, the group estimates “that each robot can completely or partially destroy around 20 housing units. This will soon leave hundreds of thousands of people without homes or shelters, forcing them to flee once again in deadly conditions, without even the bare minimum for survival.”
The robots used by the Israeli army “are essentially Israeli military vehicles, such as outdated M113 armored personnel carriers, loaded with tonnes of explosives and remotely piloted through civilian neighborhoods.”
However, the rescue workers and civil defense crews say they are continuing to use all available tools to continue their work to protect the community.
Mohammad Abu Loay, the civil defense worker, made this video explaining how he and his colleagues manage to keep saving lives under the most unbearable conditions.
More children abducted, disappeared by Israel at aid sites
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers working with US mercenary forces continue to trap, abduct, hunt and kill Palestinians seeking aid at the private Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites and other aid points every day.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza reported that since 27 May, when the GHF sites opened, at least 2,339 Palestinians have been killed and more than 17,000 injured while trying to obtain meager amounts of food aid.
This week, Instagram user Ehab Nuor filmed himself at a GHF site, under relentless fire while trying to obtain a bag of flour for his family.
A group of experts at the United Nations, including special rapporteur for human rights in Palestine Francesca Albanese and special rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, condemned the ongoing disappearing of starving Palestinians at the GHF sites, urging Israel to end its “heinous crime against an already vulnerable population.”
“Reports of enforced disappearances targeting starving civilians seeking their basic right to food is not only shocking, but amounts to torture. Using food as a tool to conduct targeted and mass disappearances needs to end now,” the experts said.
In late August, the rights group Defense for Children International-Palestine reported that five Palestinian boys between the ages of 12 and 16 years old remain missing in separate incidents between late June and early August.
DCIP says it interviewed the boys’ families, “who have continually searched hospitals and morgues for their sons’ bodies and have found no signs of them.”
Each of the boys disappeared while in the Zikim boundary area, located in north Gaza, where aid trucks cross into Gaza. The families fear their children have been abducted and disappeared by Israeli forces.
Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability program director at DCIP, said that “Israeli forces are shooting, detaining, and disappearing Palestinian children seeking aid in Gaza. Israeli forces have refused to disclose the numbers, names, and whereabouts of Palestinian children from Gaza in military custody, and these children have had no contact with the outside world.”
The organization has more than two decades of evidence “indicating that Israeli forces torture Palestinian children in military detention,” Abu Eqtaish added. “All of these children must be released and reunited with their families immediately.”
As The Electronic Intifada reported in August, a group of children who were kidnapped in late June by Israeli forces at a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation site in Rafah, in southern Gaza, were released a month later. They described their brutal torture and detention in Israel’s Sde Teiman concentration camp, where they were interrogated, beaten, and psychologically and physically tortured.
Starvation deaths climb
Children and adults alike are continuing to die of starvation across Gaza.
The United Nations’ children’s fund UNICEF stated that every single child in Gaza under 5 years old – more than 320,000 children – is at risk of acute malnutrition.
On Wednesday, the Ministry of Health in Gaza reported that six deaths from starvation were recorded in 24 hours, including one child, bringing the total number of recorded starvation deaths to 367, including 131 children.Since the announcement two weeks ago by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, declaring a formal famine, the health ministry says that 89 deaths, including 16 children, have been recorded.
The Gaza government media office stated on Monday, 1 September that only 15 percent of the necessary amount of trucks have entered Gaza.
Looting and theft by Israel-backed armed gangs continue, the media office reports, and Israel has prevented the entry of 430 basic and vital food items such as eggs, meat, fish, cheese and other dairy products, fruits and vegetables, and nutritional supplements required for pregnant and nursing mothers.
Journalists murdered
Israel assassinated at least two journalists in Gaza this week.
On Sunday, 31 August, Islam Muharib Abed, who worked as a reporter for Al-Quds Al-Yom satellite channel, was killed in an attack on her apartment in Gaza City.
On Tuesday, 2 September, photojournalist Rasmi Jihad Salem was killed.Salem worked for the Al-Manara Media company, Press TV and Al-Alam TV. The Shehab news agency reported that he was killed by Israeli shelling in Gaza City.
The Gaza government media office says that at least 248 reporters and media workers have been killed by Israel since October 2023.Hospital bombed for 14th time
Israeli forces once again bombed inside the walls of Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital in Deir al-Balah on 1 September for the 14th time since October 2023, according to the Gaza government media office.
Israel bombed a tent for displaced persons inside the walls of the hospital, specifically near the hospital’s outpatient clinic, the media office added.
“This resulted in injuries at the site of the bombing, material damage, and the immediate threat of death to dozens of patients inside the hospital,” the office stated.
In Gaza City, reporter Saed Hasballah filmed a low-flying quadcopter drone hovering over Al Ahli Arab Hospital on Wednesday.
At Al-Shifa Hospital, also in Gaza City, emergency room doctor Farhan Abdul Azeez described the total destruction of hospital buildings. He walked around the nearby cemetery, where patients were buried with the headboards of their hospital beds serving as tombstones.
The lawyer for Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the pediatrician and director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in north Gaza who was abducted by Israeli forces at the end of December 2024, was able to visit her client on 28 August.
Gheed Kassem, the lawyer, said that Abu Safiya and his nephew are both being held in the Ofer military prison. They are both suffering from scabies and other skin infections, as the Israeli prison guards are forcing them to wear the same clothes every day and they are only allowed infrequent, two-minute baths.Abu Safiya and his nephew have both lost a third of their body weight, and are being held in cells without access to sunlight – they are allowed outside only 30 minutes a month, she said.
Dr. Abu Safiya gave his lawyer the following message to the world: “I entered in the name of humanity, and I will leave in the name of humanity. I am the one who was abducted from inside the hospital. We will remain on our land and continue to provide healthcare services to the people, God willing, even from a tent.”
Meanwhile, doctors and staff at Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City, together with the Palestine Red Crescent Society, announced that, against all odds, they have successfully reactivated the cardiac catheterization clinic this week.
The Red Crescent said that in 48 hours, medical teams successfully performed three cardiac catheterization procedures, with three more scheduled – despite the dire conditions and the shortage of essential medicines and critical medical supplies.“This achievement is especially significant in light of the continued closure of border crossings, which prevents thousands of patients from traveling outside the Strip for treatment,” the Red Crescent added.
In related news, the Hind Rajab Foundation announced that, along with the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, it submitted a formal complaint to the International Criminal Court regarding the massacre at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis on 25 August.
The attack, as we reported, killed 22 civilians, including five journalists, three hospital staff, one doctor, a civil defense worker, and one child, 14-year-old Rayan Omar Mahmoud Abu Omar.
“More than 50 others were injured in what can only be described as a deliberate double-tap strike carried out with full knowledge of the civilian presence,” the groups stated.Lt. Col. Bar Veakart of the Sayeret Golani, the reconnaissance unit of the Israeli military’s Golani Brigade; Col. Bar Ganon of the Golani Brigade; Col. Miki Sharvit of the 188th Brigade; and Brig. Gen. Moran Omer of the 36th Armored Division were named in the complaint to the ICC, along with other commanders and top military leaders – including Israeli Prime Minister and war crimes fugitive Benjamin Netanyahu.
“With today’s filing before the ICC, the Hind Rajab Foundation and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights demand that the court open proceedings and issue arrest warrants against those responsible – from the Golani operators who designated the target, to the tank commanders who launched the missiles, to the generals who approved the attack, and ultimately to Prime Minister Netanyahu who provided political cover,” the groups stated.
“This massacre was not the result of chaos or confusion but of a carefully executed plan under a clear chain of command. Journalists, doctors, rescue workers and even a child were killed deliberately, under the watching eyes of Israeli drones. This was not only a war crime – it was an act of genocide.”
Highlighting resilience
Finally, as we always do, we wanted to highlight people expressing joy, determination and resilience across Gaza.
Students of the Gaza-based Camp Breakerz dance crew showed off their skills this week.
Music teacher Ahmed Muin Abu Amsha, whose video we featured just a few weeks ago showing him and his students harmonizing with the hum of the drones, says he and his colleagues took their students to the beach to play music.
“They brought their instruments, and to our surprise, Muin, Ibrahim, Youssef, Mohammad and Yassin began singing and playing music for the children in the tents by the shore.”
“We watched with pride and joy, realizing that our students are now following in their teachers’ footsteps – spreading love, music, and hope to others.”
“This is the strongest proof of our success in teaching music, even in the hardest times,” he says.
And social media user and mother Nour Abdullatif posted this photo of her son, Yamen, on his first day of kindergarten.
She posted later in the day: “After his first day, joy lit him up so brightly, so he let go of my hand for the first time since the war began. He dashed ahead, his feet barely touching the ground, as if the sea breeze had lifted him, carried him, played with his hair.“Fly, oh little bird of my heart, for that’s what birds are born to do: to rise, to dance with the wind, to taste the sky … in freedom.”
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