GAZA CITY (AFP) – An Israeli air strike on a single residential block killed nearly 100 people on Tuesday, Gaza’s Civil Defence agency said, leaving rescuers scrambling for survivors as Israel pursued its offensives in Gaza and Lebanon.
Israel’s key ally and backer the United States (US) called the strike – which killed a large number of children – “horrifying”.
The bombing came with Israel facing an international backlash after its Parliament voted overwhelmingly to ban UNRWA, the main United Nations (UN) aid agency working with Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Palestinian rescuers and desperate family members gathered around the demolished five-storey block in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza.
A charred body with long hair hung from an upper-storey window and bodies in blankets were lined up in the street as stunned relatives sought to identify loved ones.
“The number of martyrs in the massacre of the Abu Nasr family home in Beit Lahia has risen to 93 martyrs, and about 40 are still missing under the rubble,” Gaza Civil Defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
Israel’s military said it was “looking into the reports” of the strike. It earlier reported its forces had killed 40 Hamas fighters, and the loss of four soldiers in Gaza.
“The explosion happened at night and I first thought it was shelling, but when I went out after sunrise I saw people pulling bodies, limbs and the wounded from under the rubble,” said Rabie al-Shandagly, 30.
“Most of the victims are women and children, and people are trying to save the injured, but there are no hospitals or proper medical care,” he told AFP.
Washington expressed deep concern. “This was a horrifying incident with a horrifying result,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters. “We have reached out to the government of Israel to ask what happened here.”
Israel’s military has been conducting a sweeping air and ground assault in northern Gaza since October 6 – particularly around Jabalia, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun – saying it aims to prevent Hamas regrouping. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled the area, more than 12 months into the war sparked by Hamas militants launching a bloody cross-border assault into Israel on October 7 last year.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 43,061 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s Health Ministry which the UN considers reliable, triggering warnings of a humanitarian catastrophe. International concerns mounted after the Israeli Parliament voted overwhelmingly to ban UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
PHOTO: AFP
