GAZA: Israeli strikes in central Gaza killed at least 35 people Sunday, hospital officials said, as the military targeted areas in several parts of the territory a day after the country’s prime minister said the war will continue for “many more months,” resisting international calls for a cease-fire.
The military said Israeli forces were operating in Gaza’s second-largest city, Khan Younis, and residents reported strikes in the central part of the tiny enclave, after Israel this week made that region the new focus of its war.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza said a former Minister of Palestinian Authority was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip. According to Health Ministry officials, Youssef Salama (68), former Palestinian Authority Minister for Religious Affairs, was killed in the airstrike at Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. The war has sparked a humanitarian crisis, with a quarter of Gaza residents facing starvation. Israel’s bombardments have levelled vast swaths of the territory, making parts uninhabitable and displacing some 85 per cent of Gaza’s inhabitants.
Israel expanded its offensive to central Gaza this week, targeting a belt of dense urban neighbourhoods that house refugees from the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948 and their descendants.
In the area of Zweida in central Gaza, an Israeli airstrike killed 13 people, according to witnesses. The bodies were draped in white plastic and laid out in front of a hospital, where prayers were held before burial. “They were innocent people,” said Hussein Siam, whose relatives were among the dead.
Officials from Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Deir al-Balah said the 13 were among 35 bodies received on Sunday.