TEHRAN- Israel is perpetrating back-to-back massacres in the Gaza Strip, emboldened by the latest regional trip of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Health officials in Gaza said on Friday that an Israeli strike killed 38 people, including over a dozen children in the southern city of Khan Younis.

Doctors at Nasser Medical Complex confirmed 14 children, who were transferred to the medical facility, had suffocated to death after the Israeli army fired bombs and shells at residential buildings in an eastern area of Khan Younis. 

The Israeli carnage in southern Gaza comes as the regime has ratcheted up its offensive in the north of the Palestinian territory.

Israeli forces raided the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza Friday morning ordering staff, patients and the wounded to leave the building.

The raid followed the Israeli bombing and shelling of the medical facility. 

According to Al Jazeera, Israeli artillery strikes hit the oxygen room of the hospital and severely damaged its ICU. It said a number of babies and children inside the hospital were killed due to lack of oxygen.

Dr Hussam Abu Safia, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, described the situation at the facility as catastrophic, saying there is no medical care available for anyone in northern Gaza.

The Israeli army raids the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza after bombing and shelling the facility.The Kamal Adwan Hospital is one of the few remaining functioning hospitals in northern Gaza. For now, concerns are growing that Israel’s military siege could turn the hospital into a mass grave for patients. 

Israel launched a new brutal assault on northern Gaza three weeks ago where 400,000 out of the enclave’s 2.3 million population live. It has obstructed the delivery of essentials, including food, to Palestinians in northern Gaza.

The regime of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is forcibly relocating Palestinians from northern Gaza as part of an ethnic cleansing strategy, paving the way for settlers to move in.  

According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the forcible transfer of a population during war and denying access to humanitarian aid for civilians is illegal. 

But Israel has clearly demonstrated that it does not care a whit about international law. Israel has turned a blind eye to a ruling issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) calling on the regime to prevent acts of genocide. 

On Tuesday, the Haaretz newspaper revealed in an editorial that Israel is pursuing a policy of siege and starvation to force the complete evacuation of the civilian population of northern Gaza. 

Citing mounting evidence, the newspaper said Israel is implementing the now notorious “generals’ plan”. 

The plan is attributed to retired major general Giora Eiland, a former head of national security in Israel. 

It proposes the wholesale transfer of north Gaza’s population south beyond the Netzarim corridor in line with a strategy to defeat Hamas. 

Israel launched war on Gaza in October last year killing nearly 43,000 Palestinians, including about 17,000 children. But it has failed to eliminate Hamas. Israeli military officials have acknowledged the regime’s inability to destroy the resistance movement more than a year into the onslaught. 

Eiland told Haaretz in September that “it’s permissible and even recommended to starve an enemy to death, provided you’ve allowed the civilians corridors of exits beforehand. And that is exactly what I am proposing”.

Netanyahu, known as Bibi, told Blinken, who began his 11th regional tour since the start of the Gaza war by visiting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem (al-Quds) on Tuesday, that Israel is not planning to lay siege to northern Gaza. 

But since launching its new offensive in northern Gaza on October 6, the area has been under the Israeli siege. Hundreds of Palestinians have also been killed by the Israeli army in the area since then. 

Israel’s relentless attacks against Palestinians indicate that Blinken’s speeches on a ceasefire in Gaza ring hollow and serve as a cover for the regime’s genocide. The top American diplomat called for reviving ceasefire efforts to end the war on Gaza. 

Presently, it stands out a mile that Israel is seeking to return settlers to northern Gaza after they were removed from the territory in 2005. 

Itamar Ben Gvir, the Israeli national security minister, said on Tuesday that “encouraging emigration” of Palestinian residents of Gaza would be the “most ethical” solution to the conflict. Bezalel Smotrich, the regime’s finance minister, also told journalists that the Gaza Strip was “part of the Land of Israel” and that “without settlements, there is no security”.

The comments made by the far-right ministers have taken the lid off the Israeli apartheid regime’s ethnic cleaning plan in Gaza.