13 children among 33 killed in Israeli air strike
UN chief ‘dismayed,’ ‘disturbed’ by attacks on homes in Gaza City
Israeli air strikes killed 33 Palestinians, including 13 children, in Gaza early yesterday, health officials said, and rockets were fired into Israel as hostilities stretched into a seventh day.
The pre-dawn attacks were on houses in the centre of Gaza City, health officials said.
The death toll in Gaza jumped to 181, including 52 children, since the fighting erupted last Monday.
In Israel, 10 people have been killed in rocket attacks.
Both Israel and Hamas, the group that runs the enclave, said they would continue their cross-border fire after Israel destroyed a 12-storey building in Gaza City on Saturday that housed the US Associated Press and Qatar-based Al-Jazeera media operations.
The Israel military said the Al-Jalaa building was a legitimate military target, containing Hamas military offices, and that it had given advance warnings to civilians to get out of the building.
The Associated Press condemned the attack, and asked Israel to put forward evidence.
“We have had no indication Hamas was in the building or active in the building,” it said in a statement.
In what Hamas called a reprisal for Israel’s destruction of the Al-Jalaa building, the group fired 120 rockets overnight, the Israeli military said, with many intercepted and around a dozen falling short and landing in Gaza.
Israelis dashed for bomb shelters as sirens warning of incoming rocket fire blared in Tel Aviv and the southern city of Beersheba.
Some 10 people were injured while running for shelters, medical staff said.
In a burst of air strikes early yesterday, the Israeli military said it struck the home of Yehya Al-Sinwar in the southern Gaza City of Khan Younis.
Yehya, who was released from an Israeli prison in 2011, heads the political and military wings of Hamas in Gaza.
Palestinians working to clear rubble from a building wrecked in yesterday’s air strikes recovered the bodies of a woman and man.
“These are moments of horror that no one can describe. Like an earthquake hit the area,” said Mahmoud Hmaid, a father of seven who was helping with the rescue efforts.
Meanwhile, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was “dismayed” by civilian casualties in Gaza and “deeply disturbed” by Israel’s strike on a building containing media outlets.
“The secretary-general reminds all sides that any indiscriminate targeting of civilian and media structures violates international law and must be avoided at all costs,” he said. – Agencies