2023-10-22 16:55:00
Dozens of Palestinians flocked to Deir el-Balah hospital to identify their loved ones killed in an Israeli bombardment, as Israel intensifies its strikes on the Gaza Strip, the death toll of which reached 4,651 on Sunday, according to the ministry of Hamas Health.
Israel announced on Saturday an intensification of strikes, a prelude to a probable ground intervention by its troops in the small Palestinian territory that they had unilaterally evacuated in 2005, two years before the Palestinian Islamist movement took power there.
According to Hamas, the deadliest raids took place in Deir el-Balah, in the center of the Gaza Strip, where several buildings were completely destroyed.
At the city’s hospital, Gazans flock by the dozen to identify the bodies of their killed loved ones, and transport them to the cemetery, or to inquire about the condition of the injured, AFP journalists noted.
Among the remains, those of a man and his little daughter, faces uncovered, lying on the same mortuary table. They are Mohammad Joudeh and his daughter, Misk, aged three, according to the father’s cousin, Wael Wafi.
When they were extracted lifeless from the rubble, the little girl was snuggled up against her father, Mr. Wafi told AFP, supporting photo.
Names on the legs
“The entire Joudeh family, my aunt’s, was killed in the bombing. They destroyed two buildings on their heads,” said Mr. Wafi.
He said the two buildings also housed extended family members and relatives who had fled Israeli bombings in the northern Gaza Strip.
“My cousin was sleeping in his house with his daughter in his arms. He was an uneventful man who had nothing to do with the resistance,” he adds, referring to Hamas, classified as a “terrorist” organization. by the United States, the European Union and Israel.
At least 1,873 children are among the Palestinian deaths in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health, which also recorded 14,245 injured in Israeli bombings on Sunday.
These were engaged in retaliation for the October 7 attack by Hamas commandos, of a scale and violence never seen on Israeli territory since the founding of Israel in 1948. More than 1,400 people were killed in Israel, the majority of civilians mowed down by bullets, burned alive or mutilated, according to the Israeli authorities.
In the Deir el-Balah morgue on Sunday, a woman burst into tears and nearly collapsed before being held by a relative when she lifted blankets on the mortuary tables, discovering the bodies of her daughter and several children of his family, the Natils.
The names of three of them, Layan, Hani and Joane, are written in marker on their legs.
Call to evacuate
Further south, in Khan Younès, another Israeli bombing left at least thirteen dead on Saturday evening in a café, the Rio, located on the ground floor of a multi-story building and transformed into a shelter for displaced people from the war, according to a Hamas report.
“I heard the sound of an explosion and then I saw dust, flames and debris flying. A minute later they struck again,” Naji Chourrab, who lives in front.
“The ambulances arrived half an hour later to transport the dead and injured. I saw at least two charred bodies,” he adds.
Since the Hamas attack on its territory, Israel has vowed to destroy the Palestinian Islamist movement.
General Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for the Israeli army, explained that the intensified bombing was aimed at “reducing the risks in the next stages” of the conflict for Israeli forces.
The Israeli army, which has indicated that it is targeting in particular the north of the Gaza Strip to destroy Hamas infrastructure, last week called on the approximately 1.1 million inhabitants of the area to evacuate towards the south of the small territory, one of the most densely populated in the world, where a total of 2.4 million people live, half of them children.
22/10/2023 16:53:49 – Deir el-Balah (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
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