19 of family among 22 killed as Israel strikes in Rafah
RAFAH: Israeli strikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah overnight killed 22 people, including 18 children, health officials said Sunday, as the United States was on track to approve billions of dollars of additional military aid to Israel, its close ally.
Israel has carried out near-daily air raids on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has sought refuge from fighting elsewhere. It has also vowed to expand its ground offensive to the city on the border with Egypt despite international calls for restraint, including from the United States.
The House of Representatives approved a $26 billion aid package on Saturday that includes around $9 billion in humanitarian assistance for Palestine.
The first strike killed a man, his wife and their 3-year-old child, according to the nearby Kuwaiti Hospital, which received the bodies. The woman was pregnant, and the doctors managed to save the baby, the hospital said.
The second strike killed 17 children and two women, all from an extended family, according to hospital records. Mohammed al-Beheiri said his daughter, Rasha, and her six children, the youngest 18 months old, were among those killed.
The Israel-Hamas war has killed over 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials. Around 80 per cent of the population have fled their homes to other parts of the besieged coastal enclave, which experts say is on the brink of famine.
West Bank holds strike People in the West Bank launched a general strike on Sunday in protest against Israel’s killing of Palestinians in a refugee camp in Tulkarm and the Gaza Strip. The Fatah movement had called for the strike. According to the Ministry of Health, more than 450 Gazans have been killed in the West Bank alone since then, most of them died in Israeli attacks.