GAZA: An official of the health ministry in the Gaza Strip has said more than 200 people were killed in double Israeli strikes on the Jabalia refugee camp and Khan Younis camps including women and children.
“At least 50 people” were killed in an Israeli strike at dawn on the UN-run Al-Fakhura school in the camp, which had been converted into a shelter for displaced Palestinians, the official told AFP.
A separate strike on another building in the camp on Saturday killed 32 people from the same family, 19 of them children, the health ministry official said.
Jabalia is the biggest refugee camp in Gaza, where some 1.6 million have been displaced by more than six weeks of fighting between Israel and Hamas.
The Israeli army did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the two strikes. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) was also unable to offer an immediate reaction.
The Gaza health ministry has said 32 people from one family were killed in an Israeli strike on a building in a Gaza refugee camp, with 19 children among the dead, AFP reports.
The ministry released a list of the names of 32 members of the Abu Habal family killed in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, the largest in the Palestinian territory.
Air strike west of Khan Younis kills 15 Palestinians
At least 15 people have been killed following an air strike that hit a house west of Khan Younis, health officials from Gaza’s Nasser Hospital said, Reuters reports.
Gaza health authorities raised their death toll on Friday to more than 12,000 with 5,000 of them children. The United Nations deems those figures credible, though they are now updated infrequently due to the difficulty of collecting information.
Attacking hospitals makes ‘criminal nature’ of Israel more obvious to world: Iran minister
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani has decried Israel’s “attacks” on hospitals in the Gaza strip, AFP reports.
“Attacking hospitals is in conflict with all human rights standards, international law and Geneva Conventions and makes the criminal nature of this regime even more obvious to the world,” he said on X, formerly Twitter, in reference to Israel.
His statement came as hundreds of people fled Gaza’s main Al-Shifa hospital, where more than 2,000 patients, medics and displaced people were trapped.
Rallies held across Iran to support conflict-battered Gaza
Thousands of Iranians have held rallies across the country against Israel’s unrelenting bombardment of Gaza Strip following the shock attacks by Hamas last month, AFP reports.
The demonstrations in the capital Tehran and other cities were held in “support of the oppressed children of Gaza” under the slogan “Palestine is not alone”, according to local media.
In Tehran, crowds of demonstrators waved Palestinian flags, while others held banners reading “Down with America” and “Down with Israel”, according to AFP journalists.
Others burnt Israeli flags while some waved the flags of the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah, Iran’s ally, which has been engaged in border skirmishes with Israel since Oct 7.
“The Zionist regime (Israel) can no longer see peace and security,” Hossein Salami, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said in a speech during the Tehran rally. Similar demonstrations took place in other major cities including Shiraz, Kerman and Isfahan.
‘These attacks cannot become commonplace’: UN agency chief on strike on Gaza school
Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of the United Nations’ agency for Palestinian refugees, has said he was “receiving horrifying images and footage of scores of people killed and injured” in the strike on Al-Fakhura School.
“These attacks cannot become commonplace, they must stop. A humanitarian ceasefire cannot wait any longer.”
‘Ceasefire now. The killing in Gaza must stop’: LA Times editorial board
The Los Angeles Times’ editorial board has said “it is time for a ceasefire” in Israel’s military offence against Gaza.
In an editorial, it stated, “It is time for the Biden administration to assert strong and sustained pressure on the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to stop attacks that have reportedly already killed more than 11,000 Gazans.”
Terming Israel’s operation as “decidedly non-surgical”, the LA Times emphasised that when the “so-called humanitarian pauses in the bombardment and ground operations are too brief to realistically permit innocents to flee […] such pauses are “so deficient as to be meaningless”.
The publication highlighted that the displaced people who moved to the south from northern Gaza Strip are now “trapped” as they can neither enter Egypt nor Israel.
“Remaining mindful of America’s mistakes, it is incumbent upon the Biden administration now to avoid complicity with Israel’s. We are past the time to excuse the horror in Gaza.”
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