Gaza civil defence says 19 killed in Israeli strikes

GAZA STRIP: Rescuers in Gaza said Saturday that at least 19 people, including eight children, were killed in Israeli strikes across the Palestinian territory.

According to the civil defence agency, an air strike at dawn on the house of the al-Ghoul family in Gaza City killed 11 people, seven of them children.

“The home, which housed several displaced people, was completely destroyed,” said civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal.

“It was a two-storey building and several people are still under the rubble,” he added, saying Israeli drones had “also fired on ambulance staff”.

Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army did not immediately comment on the strike.

AFP images from the neighbourhood of Shujaiya, in the east of Gaza City, showed residents combing through smoking rubble and bodies lined up on the ground, covered in white sheets.

“A huge explosion woke us up. Everything was shaking,” said witness Ahmed Mussa.

“I was surprised to see (the strike) was on the house of our neighbours, the al-Ghoul family. It was home to children, women. There wasn’t anyone wanted or who posed a threat.”

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Elsewhere, the civil defence agency said five security officers, tasked with accompanying aid convoys, were killed by an Israeli strike as they were driving in a car in the southern city of Khan Yunis.

Bassal accused Israel of having “deliberately targeted” them in order to “affect the humanitarian supply chain and increase the suffering” of the population.

The army has not yet responded to the accusations.

Local rescuers also said three members of the same family, including a child, were killed when their house was bombed in Khan Yunis.

The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 45,717 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.