At least 19 killed in Israeli strike on Gaza

Gaza’s civil defence agency said that 19 people, including at least six children, were killed by Israeli air strikes and tank fire on Saturday.

Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that “19 people were killed and more than 40 others wounded in three massacres caused by Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip between midnight and this morning,” as well as by tank fire in Rafah in the territory’s south.

One of the strikes hit a house in the Zeitun neighbourhood of Gaza City in the north of the territory, killing seven people, three of them children, and wounding 10.

“What did these people do?” said Abdullah Shaldan, a member of the family whose house was destroyed. “They were sleeping in their homes -- they are civilians who have nothing to do with Hamas or the resistance.”

AFPTV footage showed people searching the rubble using torches and mobile phones in the darkness, while a young boy desperately cried “papa.”

Another strike in the main southern city of Khan Yunis killed six people, including three children, and wounded 26 displaced people who were living in tents near the house that was struck, said Bassal.

“I immediately rushed there and saw the destruction and people carrying body parts from under the rubble,” Umm Muhammad Abu Sabla, the sister of one of the victims, told AFP.

“Our entire life is misery. Let them kill us all so we can be relieved from this suffering,” the 62-year-old said.

In Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, four people were killed in another strike on a house, and in Rafah, along the territory’s southern border, two young men were killed by tank fire, Bassal said.

At least 44,056 people have been killed in Gaza during more than 13 months of war, most of them civilians, according to figures from Gaza’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.