GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Saturday that Israeli air strikes killed at least 14 Palestinians overnight, including women and children.
The health ministry in Gaza said that at least 43,552, Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in more than 13 months of Israeli military campaign.
An air strike hit tents housing displaced Palestinians in the southern area of Khan Younis, killing at least nine people, including children and women, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
The Palestinian Red Crescent also confirmed the toll, saying 11 others were wounded in the strike and were taken to Nasser Hospital.
A second air strike killed five people, including children, and injured about 22 when “Israeli warplanes hit Fahad Al-Sabah school”, which had been turned into a shelter for “thousands of displaced people” in the Al-Tuffah district of Gaza City, Bassal said.
The dead and injured were taken to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, he added.
In recent months, the military has struck several schools-turned-shelters.
UNICEF said Friday that “at least 64 attacks against schools – almost two every day – were registered in the Gaza Strip last month”.
It said Gaza schools “largely serve as shelters for displaced children and families”, adding that since the start of the war “more than 95 percent of schools in Gaza have been partially or completely destroyed”.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military said Saturday that its troops killed “dozens of terrorists” in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza, where it has been conducting a sweeping air and ground operation for more than a month.
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The Israeli military is currently engaged in a two-front war, with troops fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
“Over the past day, the IAF (air force) struck over 50 terror targets in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip,” the military said in a statement.
“Among the targets struck were military structures, weapons storage facilities and launchers,” it added.
Israel’s war in Gaza broke out after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 last year.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 43,552 people, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers to be reliable.
On Friday, UN rights chief Volker Turk said “this unprecedented level of killing and injury of civilians (in Gaza) is a direct consequence of the failure to comply with fundamental principles of international humanitarian law”. – AFP
