Israel-Hamas war: Israeli airstrike kills family with 11 people
An Israeli air strike hit a house in Gaza City and killed 11 members of a single family, including women and children.
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An Israeli air strike hit a house in Gaza City and killed 11 members of a single family, including women and children.
Caza’s civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal confirmed the deaths, saying: “We have recovered the bodies of 11 people, including four children and three women, after an Israeli air strike hit the house of the Bustan family in eastern Gaza City.”
The strike took place near the Shujaiya school in the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City on Saturday.
“Rescuers are continuing to search for the missing,” Bassal said. The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strike. Bassal said Israeli forces carried out similar strikes in some other parts of the Hamas-run territory overnight, killing at least 10 people.
Five people were killed in northwestern Gaza City when an air strike hit a group of people near Dar Al-Arqam school, he said.
Three others were killed in a strike in the Al-Mawasi area of the southern Khan Yunis governorate, where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge, Bassal added.
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FUNERAL FOR US-TURKISH ACTIVIST
Mourners will gather in southwest Turkey for the funeral of a US-Turkish activist shot dead while protesting Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
The killing last week of 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi has sparked international condemnation and infuriated Turkey, further escalating tensions over the war in Gaza that began with Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
Eygi’s body, wrapped in the Turkish flag, arrived at its final resting place in the Aegean town of Didim on Friday following a martyrs’ ceremony at Istanbul’s airport.
Eygi was a frequent visitor to the seaside resort.
The family wanted Eygi to be buried in Didim, where her grandfather lives and her grandmother has been laid to rest.
Ankara said this week it was probing her death and pressed the United Nations for an independent inquiry.
Turkey is also planning to issue international arrest warrants for those responsible for Eygi’s death depending on the findings of its investigation.
The Israeli military has said it was likely Eygi was hit “unintentionally” by forces while they were responding to a “violent riot”.
ISRAEL VOWS TO BRING HOSTAGES HOME
The Israeli army will use all means to bring back hostages still held in Gaza, its spokesman told a group of foreign journalists on Friday in the war-scarred city of Rafah.
“We need to do everything, everything we can, in all means, to bring them back home,” military spokesman Daniel Hagari told the journalists embedded with the Israeli army.
“This is one of the goals of the war, and we will achieve it.” Rear Admiral Hagari was speaking in front of a shaft in the Tel al-Sultan neighbourhood of Rafah that connects to a tunnel where Israel says Hamas shot dead six hostages late last month.
Their deaths spurred an outpouring of grief in Israel as well as anger at the government, which critics say is not doing enough to reach a deal that would end the war in Gaza and secure the remaining hostages’ release.
IDF SHOW NEW PHOTOS OF HAMAS TUNNELS
Israeli Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari has vowed to decimate the labyrinth of tunnels Hamas forces are using as new images emerge purporting to show the network.
The images, captured and edited under the supervision of the Israeli military on Friday, show a tunnel where the IDF claims Palestinian militants killed six hostages in Gaza last month.
“You have a maze of tunnels here, a maze of tunnels here in Rafah, underneath the houses. This is why the destruction,” said Rear Admiral Hagari.
“There is even not one point left without a tunnel here in Rafah... In order to defeat (Hamas) we need to take control of this underground system.”
It’s unclear exactly where the tunnel opening is, but it’s tucked in the corner of a destroyed room featuring smiling children’s cartoons on the walls - including Mickey Mouse.
The walls appear to be reinforced with bricks, shoring up the network against heavy Israeli shelling, while the discreet location means fighters could come and go undetected.
Rafah, in the far south of Gaza, has been hit hard by the fighting.
Footage released overnight showed streets lined with the bombed-out shells of buildings, many partially collapsed with rubble spilling into the streets.
The latest hostage deaths caused a wave of rage at the government, which critics say are not doing enough to end the war and secure the release of the remaining hostages.
‘ZERO RESPONSIBILITY’: CLINTON SLAMS NETANYAHU
Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has slammed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for taking “zero responsibility” for Hamas’ October 7 attack.
Ms Clinton discusses Mr Netanyahu and the Israel-Hamas conflict in her upcoming book “Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love, and Liberty,” which will be released in the US on Tuesday local time.
“In an important way, Netanyahu is nothing like [Golda] Meir,” Ms Clinton writes, in reference to the Israeli prime minister who was in power when Egypt attacked in 1973, and whom she admired for the way she “mixed humour and gravitas”.
“She accepted a commission of inquiry into the failures that led to the Yom Kippur war and resigned from office.
“Netanyahu, by contrast, has taken zero responsibility and refuses to call an election, let alone step down.”
Efforts by the US and its allies to broker a ceasefire and secure the release of hostages held by Hamas have so far been unsuccessful.
The former first lady, New York senator, secretary of state and Democratic presidential nominee has already published three memoirs.
Ms Clinton voices her disapproval of Mr Netanyahu in an extensive section about her time at Columbia University, where she took on roles as a professor of practice at the School of International and Public Affairs and a presidential fellow at Columbia World Projects in 2023.
After Hamas attacked Israel, and Israel’s relentless bombing in response, Columbia was among US campuses gripped by anti-Israel protests.
Ms Clinton discusses dealing with students on both sides of the issue.
She recalled the campus as feeling “tense with shock and grief,” while also holding discussion sessions with her colleague Keren Yarhi-Milo, the dean who grew up in Israel and served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
However, Ms Clinton writes, some student questions “troubled me, like why was Hamas considered a terrorist organisation but not the IDF?”
“The most effective protest movements do their homework, have clear goals, and build coalitions rather than alienate potential allies,” she writes.
“Just look at the mass marches in Israel in 2023 that helped block Netanyahu’s right wing government from gutting judicial independence.”
Ms Clinton’s husband Bill also clashed with Mr Netanyahu during his presidency, reportedly asking staffers, after his first meeting with the right winger in 1996: “Who the f** does he think he is? Who’s the f***ing superpower here?”
‘NO ONE IS SAFE’: CHILDREN, AID WORKERS KILLED IN SCHOOL HIT
An Israeli air strike hit a school in central Gaza, with the Hamas-run territory’s civil defence agency reporting that 18 people were killed, including UN staffers, and the military saying it had targeted militants.
The Al-Jawni school in Nuseirat, already hit several times during the war, was struck again on Wednesday local time, killing 18 people, including two members of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said Gaza’s civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal.
UNRWA gave the higher figure of six staffers killed at the Nuseirat school-turned-shelter, calling it the highest death toll among its team in a single incident.
“This school has been hit five times since the war began. It is home to around 12,000 displaced people, mainly women and children,” the UN agency separately posted on X.
“No one is safe in Gaza.”
UN chief Antonio Guterres deplored the killings, which he also said included six UNRWA colleagues.
“What’s happening in Gaza is totally unacceptable,” he wrote on social media platform X.
“These dramatic violations of international humanitarian law need to stop now.”
Gaza’s civil defence agency said at least 18 other people were wounded in the school bombing.
AFP could not independently verify the toll, which the agency said included several women and children.
Israel’s military said its air force had “conducted a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command-and-control centre” on the grounds of Al-Jawni, without elaborating on the outcome or the identities of those targeted.
“Most of the people took refuge in schools and the schools were bombed,” said Basil Amarneh from Gaza’s Al-Aqsa hospital, where children were arriving in the arms of medics.
“Where will people go?”.
GRIM VIDEO SHOWS WHERE HOSTAGES WERE KILLED
Israeli military has shared a video from inside one of the tunnels under Gaza where six people were held hostage in “brutal conditions and murdered by Hamas”.
Israel Defence Force spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari takes viewers on a tour of the tunnel 20 metres below Rafah’s Tel Sultan neighbourhood where the bodies of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, Eden Yerushalmi, 24, Ori Danino, 25, Alex Lobanov, 32, Carmel Gat, 40, and Almog Sarusi, 27 were discovered on 31 August.
The hostages were killed two days earlier, according to the IDF.
Down inside the tunnel, RAdm Hagari points to rubbish, bottles of urine, women’s clothes and blood stains where the six hostages were found “murdered”.
He explains that soldiers have been collecting evidence for forensic testing and intelligence. He holds up items he claims belonged to Hamas terrorists including AK-47 magazines and chargers and Koran books.
RAdm Hagari says “there were women here in the tunnel” and points out women’s clothes.
He then points out blood on the floor of the tunnel and in soft and quiet tone said: “This is the blood of Hersh, Eden, Carmel, Ori, Almog and Alex”.
HOSTAGES TRIED TO FIGHT OFF KILLERS
Slain Israeli American Hersh Goldberg-Polin and several other hostages who were executed by Hamas terrorists had reportedly tried to fight off their killers in the final moments before they were shot dead in a Gaza tunnel.
The grief-stricken relatives of the six hostages were informed of the harrowing detail during a briefing on the Israel Defense Forces’ investigation into their murders, Channel 12 News reported.
“Several of the six are assessed to have defended themselves and struggled with those who shot them,” the outlet reported.
The bodies of Goldberg-Polin, 23, and the other five hostages — Eden Yerushalmi, 24, Ori Danino, 25, Alex Lobanov, 32, Carmel Gat, 40, and Almog Sarusi, 27 — were discovered in the tunnel beneath the southern Gaza city of Rafah back on 31 August.
There was “forensic” evidence that showed the male hostages “Hersh, Ori, Alex and Almog defended Eden and Carmel” before they were killed, according to the report.
The families were also apparently shown evidence from inside the tunnel and were told of the harsh conditions the six were held in after being kidnapped by Hamas during on 7 October.
The tunnel where they were held was too low to stand in and just two people wide.
There were no air vents, toilets or showers.
Protein bars, a generator, a small flashlight and a chess set were among the items found discarded in the tunnel when it was raided by the IDF, the report said.
Several notepads were also found, which have since been turned over to the hostages’ relatives.
– with AFP
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Originally published as Israel-Hamas war: Israeli airstrike kills family with 11 people
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