At least 49 people killed after Israeli strikes on Gaza City
by AFP, https://www.thejournal.ie/author/afp/ · TheJournal.ieLAST UPDATE | 13 hrs ago
GAZA’S CIVIL DEFENCE agency has said Israeli strikes on Gaza has killed at least 49 people in the past 24 hours, with more people trapped under the rubble after a family home was hit.
Israel resumed its military offensive in the Gaza Strip on 18 March, breaking a two-month ceasefire that had largely halted the fighting.
A strike on the house of Al-Khour family in Gaza City’s Sabra neighbourhood killed 10 people, Mughayyir said, with witnesses reporting an estimated 20 victims trapped beneath the rubble.
Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence agency, had earlier said that about 30 people were missing under the rubble.
Umm Walid al-Khour, who survived the attack, said that “everyone was sleeping with their children” when the strike hit.
“The house collapsed on top of us,” she told AFP.
“Those who survived cried for help but nobody came… Most of the deceased were children.”
The dead in the early morning airstrike in an area in western Gaza City included three women and five children, according to Shifa Hospital, which received the bodies.
Israel’s military said that it had struck a Hamas militant and the structure where he operated collapsed, adding that the collapse was under review.
AFP footage showed rescuers searching under the rubble as a wounded man was pulled out from the debris.
Elsewhere in the city, three people were killed in Israeli shelling of a house in the Al-Shati refugee camp, Mughayyir said.
More strikes across the Gaza Strip killed four others.
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There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
According to figures released yesterday by the health ministry in Gaza, Israel’s ramped-up attacks since 18 March have killed at least 2,062 Palestinians, taking the overall war death toll in Gaza since October 2023 to 51,439 people.
A Hamas delegation is due to meet Egyptian mediators in Cairo today for talks on a Gaza ceasefire.
“The Hamas negotiating delegation, headed by Khalil al-Hayya, has left for Cairo,” senior Hamas official Taher al-Nunu said yesterday.
“It will meet with Egyptian officials tomorrow to discuss Hamas’s vision for ending the war,” he added, reffirming that that Hamas’s weapons “are not up for negotiation”.
The militants said they would not accept a “partial” ceasefire deal and called for a “comprehensive” agreement to halt the war.
The World Food Programme (WFP) has said its food stocks in Gaza have run out under Israel’s nearly eight-week blockade, ending a main source of sustenance for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the territory.
The WFP said in a statement that it delivered the last of its stocks to charity kitchens that it supports around Gaza.
It said those kitchens are expected to run out of food in the coming days.
Some 80% of Gaza’s population of more than two million relies primarily on charity kitchens for food, because other sources have shut down under Israel’s blockade, according to the UN.
Additional reporting by Press Association
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