GAZA STRIP: Israeli warplanes struck two central Gaza refugee camps Sunday, killing at least 53 people and wounding dozens, health officials said.
Israel said it would press on with its offensive to crush the territory’s Hamas rulers, despite U.S. appeals for even brief pauses to get aid to desperate civilians.
Airstrikes hit the Maghazi refugee camp, killing at least 40 people and wounding 34 others, Gaza’s Health Ministry said. The camp is in the zone where Israel’s military had urged Palestinian civilians to seek refuge as it focused its offensive on the north.
An AP reporter at a nearby hospital saw eight dead children, including a baby, brought in after the strike. A surviving child was led down the corridor, her clothes caked in dust, an expression of shock on her face.
Arafat Abu Mashaia, who lives in the camp, said the Israeli airstrike flattened several multistory homes where people forced out of other parts of Gaza were sheltering.
“It was a true massacre,” he said. “All here are peaceful people. I challenge anyone who says there were resistance [fighters] here.”
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Another airstrike hit a house near a school at the Bureji refugee camp in central Gaza, and staff at Al-Aqsa Hospital told the AP at least 13 people were killed. The camp is home to an estimated 46,000 people and was struck Thursday as well.
Despite appeals and overseas demonstrations, Israel has continued its bombardment across Gaza, saying it is targeting Hamas and accusing it of using civilians as human shields. Critics say Israel’s strikes are often disproportionate, considering the large number of civilians killed.
On the ground, Israeli forces in Gaza have reported finding stashes of weapons at times, including explosives, suicide drones and missiles.
In northern Gaza, swaths of residential neighborhoods have been leveled in airstrikes. The U.N. office for humanitarian affairs says more than half the remaining residents, estimated at around 300,000, are sheltering in U.N.-run facilities.
Israeli planes again dropped leaflets urging people to head south during a four-hour window Sunday. Crowds could be seen walking down Gaza’s main north-south highway carrying baggage and pets and pushing wheelchairs. Others led donkey carts.
One man said they had to walk 500 meters with their hands raised while passing Israeli troops. Another described seeing bodies in damaged cars along the road. “The children saw tanks for the first time. Oh, world, have mercy on us,” said one Palestinian who declined to give his name.
(VOA)
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