Gaza City, December 22 (RHC)-- An Israeli air strike has killed 12 members of a family, including seven children, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Civil Defence rescue agency has reported.
A video posted by the agency on its Telegram channel on Friday evening showed its staff retrieving victims from under the rubble of the Khallah family home in Jabalia.
“All of the martyrs are from the same family, including seven children, the oldest aged six,” civil defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal told the AFP news agency. Basal added that the air raid injured 15 other people.
The Israeli army told AFP it had struck “several terrorists who were operating in a military structure belonging to the Hamas terrorist organisation and posed a threat to IDF troops operating in the area”.
“According to an initial examination, the reported number of casualties resulting from the strike does not align with the information held by the IDF,” it added.
Pope Francis on Saturday condemned the bombing of children in Gaza as “cruelty”. “Yesterday children were bombed. This is cruelty, this is not war,” he said. “I want to say it because it touches my heart.”
Israel continued its attacks across the Gaza Strip on Friday, more than 14 months into its assault on Gaza. At least eight people were killed by a drone missile that hit a residential building in the market street of Nuseirat refugee camp, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
Four people were also killed in an air raid on Beit Hanoon, Al Jazeera correspondents said. The victims were two girls and their parents.
The bodies of three brothers were also retrieved from the rubble of a bombed home near Kamal Adwan Hospital.
Gaza has become a “graveyard” as heavy winter rains, hunger, dire living conditions and ongoing hostilities continue to endanger lives, UNRWA (the United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency) Senior Emergency Officer Louise Wateridge warned on Friday.
“An entire society here is now a graveyard … Over two million people are trapped,” she said, speaking from the Nuseirat camp.
“It’s impossible for families to shelter in these conditions,” she said. “Most people are living under fabric, they don’t even have waterproof structures and 69 percent of the buildings here have been damaged or destroyed. There’s absolutely nowhere for people to shelter from these elements.”
UNRWA provides assistance to nearly six million Palestinian refugees across Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
Israeli politicians in October passed legislation to bar UNRWA from operating in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem while raising the prospect of similar measures against other aid agencies.
