Israeli airstrike on a house kills at least 9 in southern Gaza city of Rafah, including 6 children

An Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza’s southernmost town killed at least nine people, including six children, hospital authorities said Saturday, as Israel continued its nearly seven-month offensive in the Palestinian territory besieged.

Israel’s war against the Islamic militant group Hamas led to a dramatic escalation of tensions in an already unstable Middle East.

The strike hit a residential building in the western Tel Sultan neighborhood of the city of Rafah on Friday evening, according to Gaza Civil Defense. The bodies of the six children, two women and a man were taken to Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, according to hospital records.

At the hospital, relatives cried and hugged the children’s bodies, wrapped in white shrouds, while others comforted them.

The victims included Abdel-Fattah Sobhi Radwan, his wife Najlaa Ahmed Aweidah and their three children, said his brother-in-law Ahmed Barhoum. Barhoum also lost his wife, Rawan Radwan, and their 5-year-old daughter Alaa.

“This is a world devoid of all human and moral values,” Barhoum told The Associated Press Saturday morning, crying as he gently rocked and rocked Alaa’s body in his arms. “They bombed a house full of displaced people, women and children. There were no martyrs except women and children.”

No casualties were recorded during a second nighttime strike in the city.

Rafah, which lies on the border with Egypt, is currently home to more than half of Gaza’s total population, around 2.3 million people, the vast majority of whom have been displaced by fighting further north in the territory. .

Despite calls for restraint from the international community, including Israel’s staunchest ally, the United States, the Israeli government has insisted for months that it intends to launch a ground offensive in the city, where, according to him, many remaining Hamas militants are entrenched.

Such a ground operation has not materialized so far, but the Israeli army has repeatedly carried out airstrikes on and around the city.

The war was sparked by an unprecedented raid in southern Israel carried out by Hamas and other militant groups on October 7, which left around 1,200 people dead, the vast majority civilians, and saw around 250 people kidnapped and taken to Gaza. Israel says there are around 130 hostages remaining in Gaza, although it has been confirmed that more than 30 of them are now dead, either killed on October 7 or dying in captivity.

The Gaza Health Ministry said on Saturday that the bodies of 37 people killed by Israeli strikes had been transported to Gaza hospitals in the past 24 hours. Hospitals also received 68 injured people, the press release said. The latest figures provide a global vision Palestinian death toll of the Israel-Hamas war to at least 34,049, and the number of wounded to 76,901, the ministry said. Although Hamas-run health authorities do not differentiate between fighters and civilians in their count, they say at least two-thirds are children and women.

The war caused spiraling regional tensions, leading to a dramatic eruption of violence between Israel and its archenemy Iran, which threatened to escalate into a full-fledged war.

Iran and Israel on Friday downplayed an apparent Israeli airstrike near a major air base and nuclear site in central Iran, indicating that both sides were withdrawing from what could have become a conflict total. In recent weeks, a suspected Israeli strike killed two Iranian generals at an Iranian consulate in Syria and was followed by a an unprecedented barrage of Iranian missiles on Israel.

Israel has also clashed with the Hezbollah militant group, an Iranian proxy operating out of Lebanon, with the two sides frequently exchanging rocket and drone attacks across the Lebanese-Israeli border. Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have also joined the fray, launching strikes against merchant ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in what they see as a solidarity campaign with the Palestinians in Gaza.

Tensions are also high in the occupied West Bank, where an Israeli military raid Friday on the Nur Shams refugee camp killed at least four Palestinians, including three militants, according to the Israeli military, Palestinian health officials and an activist group. .

Palestinian health authorities said one of those killed was a 15-year-old boy shot by Israeli fire. The Islamic Jihad militant group confirmed the deaths of three members, including one it said was a local military commander. The Israeli military said four Israeli soldiers were lightly injured during the operation.

Saraya al-Quds, the military wing of Islamic Jihad, said its fighters engaged in heavy artillery fighting with Israeli forces in the town of Tulkarem, adjacent to Nur Shams, on Saturday morning. No further details were immediately available. Residents of Tulkarem launched a general strike on Saturday to protest the Nur Shams attack, with shops, restaurants and government offices all closed.

The Palestinian Authority, which administers part of the West Bank, has a limited presence in many towns in the territory’s north, including Tulkarem and Jenin. Militant groups, including Islamic Jihad, are active in both cities, often clashing with Israeli soldiers during military raids.

Since the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, more than 460 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank, Palestinian health officials say. Israel organizes frequent raids on towns in this unstable territory. Among the dead are activists, but also stone throwers and bystanders. Some were also killed in attacks by Israeli settlers.