Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip continued for a fifth consecutive day, with Israeli air raids hitting a refugee camp where at least 10 Palestinians, including eight children, were killed.
Number of people killed by Israeli bombardment on besieged enclave rises to 144, with 13 also killed by Israeli forces in occupied West Bank.
In the early hours of Saturday, rescue workers were still trying to pull bodies from under the rubble as more people are believed to be dead. Hamas, the group that controls the besieged enclave, responded to the latest attack by firing a barrage of rockets towards the southern Israeli towns of Askhelon and Ashdod. No casualties were reported.
At least 144 Palestinians, including some 42 children, have been killed in the Gaza Strip since Monday. Some 950 others have been wounded. In the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces have killed at least 13 Palestinians protesting against continued Israeli occupation and the ongoing bombardment of Gaza. Confrontations between Israeli police and Palestinian demonstrators continued into the night in occupied East Jerusalem.
At least eight people( Jews) in Israel have also been killed. The Israeli army said hundreds of rockets have been fired from Gaza towards various locations in Israel and they have added reinforcements near the enclave’s eastern lands.
As violence escalates, the humanitarian crisis grows steadily worse with thousands of Palestinian families taking shelter in United Nations-run schools in northern Gaza to escape Israeli artillery fire. The UN has said it estimates approximately 10,000 Palestinians have left their homes in Gaza amid the Israeli offensive.
Palestinians were set on Saturday to mark 73 years since the ethnic cleansing of their homeland by Zionist militias to create the state of Israel. The event is called the Nakba, or “Catastrophe”, in Palestinian history.
Egypt sent 10 ambulances into Gaza to pick up casualties of Israeli bombardments for treatment in Egyptian hospitals, medical and security sources told Reuters news agency.
The ambulances entered Gaza at the Rafah crossing, which is otherwise closed for five days over the Eid al-Fitr holiday and the weekend and is due to reopen on Monday.
A further five ambulances have been deployed to enter Gaza later and three Egyptian hospitals have been readied to provide treatment, the sources and local health officials said.
Funerals are being held in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus for Palestinian protesters killed on Friday by Israeli forces. At least 13 Palestinians were killed as protests swept across the occupied West Bank.
Nabil Abu al-Reesh, a doctor based in the Gaza Strip, gave his account of Israel’s airstrike that targeted a four-story house on the edge of al-Shati refugee camp.
“We are still trying to recover more bodies and trying to understand who is who,” al-Reesh said.
“This is truly a massacre that we cannot describe in words,” he said.
“I don’t know how he managed to stay alive,” he added, pointing to an infant who is the only survivor of a family that was killed by the Israeli airstrike.
“Maybe he survived to witness what happened to the rest of his family,” he said.