Families flee as Israel slams Gaza
Ten family members in a refugee camp are killed and a building housing international media outlets is demolished in Israeli airstrikes.
Israel pummelled the Gaza Strip with airstrikes at the weekend, killing 10 family members in a refugee camp and demolishing a building housing international media outlets, as Palestinian militants fired barrages of rockets.
Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank as Israeli fighter jets struck several sites in the densely populated Gaza Strip.
About 10,000 Gazans have fled homes near the Israeli border for fear of a ground offensive, the UN said. “They are sheltering in schools, mosques and other places during a global COVID-19 pandemic with limited access to water, food, hygiene and health services, UN humanitarian official Lynn Hastings said.
One strike on a three-storey building in the Shati refugee camp killed 10 members of an extended family — two mothers and their four children each. Israel’s army claimed the building was used by senior Hamas officials.
Mohammed al-Hadidi said he had lost most of his family in the strike. “What did they do to deserve this? We’re civilians,” said the devastated father, whose five-month-old baby was also hurt in the explosion.
“They are striking our children — children — without prior warning.” Palestinian militants responded with volleys of rockets into Israel, killing a man near Tel Aviv.
Balls of flame thrust into the sky on Saturday afternoon as Israel’s air force flattened a 13-floor Gaza building housing Qatar-based Al Jazeera and the Associated Press news agency, after giving a warning to evacuate.
“It is clear that those who are waging this war do not only want to spread destruction and death in Gaza, but also to silence media that are witnessing, documenting and reporting the truth,” Al Jazeera’s Jerusalem bureau chief, Walid al-Omari, said.
AP chief executive Gary Pruitt said he was “shocked and horrified” by the attack.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US President Joe Biden that Israel did its utmost to safeguard civilians in its Gaza bombing campaign.
“The proof is that towers containing terror sites are cleared of uninvolved people prior to being attacked,” he said.
The owner of the Jala Tower, Jawad Mehdi, said an Israeli intelligence officer had told him he had just an hour to evacuate the building. Israel claimed that “military intelligence” agents of Hamas, the Gaza Strip’s Islamist rulers, were also in the building.
Mr Biden also spoke to Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, the first time since the US President took office in January.
The White House earlier said it had told the Israelis that “the safety and security of journalists and independent media is a paramount responsibility”.
Tor Wennesland, the UN Middle East envoy, said 40 Gazans and two Israeli children had been killed over the past few days.
Israeli air and artillery strikes on Gaza since last Monday have killed 145 people including 41 children, and wounded another 1100, health officials say.
Palestinian armed groups have fired at least 2300 rockets at Israel, killing 10 people, including a child and a soldier, and wounding over 560 Israelis. Israeli air defences have intercepted many rockets.
Palestinians on Saturday marked the Nakba, the “catastrophe” in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced during Israel’s creation in 1947-1948.
A Palestinian security source said the fighting was the “most intense” since the second intifada, or uprising, that began in 2000.
Tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators staged protests across the world, including in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Australia.
Israel, which is also trying to contain Jewish-Arab violence within its borders, is facing its bloodiest conflict with Gaza militants since 2014.
It launched strikes last Monday after Hamas fired rockets towards Jerusalem following bloody Israeli police action at the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound.
That followed a crackdown against protests over planned Israeli expulsions of Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.
At a protest in the district on Saturday, Israeli forces were seen beating a woman inside a car and shoving a young female protester to the ground.
Mixed Jewish-Arab towns within Israel have also seen mob violence, with more than 750 people arrested last week, police said.
Israel’s northern borders with Lebanon and Syria were also tense.
AFP
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