The Israeli armed forces today bombed at least four houses in Rafaraising fears that it will not be long before the planned start ground military operation on the southern edge of the besieged Palestinian enclave, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are crowded.
Eleven members of a family were killed in one of those airstrikes, according to health officials cited by the Reuters news agency.
As rescuers removed bodies from the rubble of a nearby building, Musa Dahir said he was awakened by the powerful blast, kissed his terrified daughter and ran outside to witness the destruction. Among the victims were his 75-year-old father and his 62-year-old mother. “My parents had come with friends from Gaza City,” he told Reuters. “They all lived together and disappeared in an instant,” he adds.
In another location that was bombed, Jamil Abu Houri says that by intensifying the airstrikes, Israel wanted to show its contempt for the UN Security Council, which last week passed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. He fears that the ground attack on Rafah will not be long, as Israel has been threatening for weeks in defiance of US appeals that warn of the risk of humanitarian disaster. “The shelling has intensified, they are threatening us with a ground intervention and they are saying that the green light has been given for the invasion of Rafah,” says Houri and wonders: “Where is the (UN) Security Council?” “Look at our children. Where should we go?”, he stresses desperately.
In an Israeli strike in the afternoon in Rafah, four more Palestinians were killed, including a woman and a child, while several people were injured, according to the health authorities of the Palestinian enclave.
In the western outskirts of Gaza City, seven people were killed by an Israeli airstrike on a house, the same sources said.
Since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas, more than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip, and thousands more are estimated to be buried in the rubble of flattened buildings, according to a health ministry tally in the Hamas-controlled enclave. .
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