10 people including 6 children killed
Ten people, including six children, have been killed in an Israeli air strike while waiting to fill water containers in central Gaza on Sunday, emergency service officials say.
Their bodies were sent to Nuseirat’s al-Awda Hospital, which also treated 16 injured people including seven children, a doctor there said.
Eyewitnesses said adrone fired a missile at a crowd queuing with empty jerry cans next to a water tanker in al-Nuseirat refugee camp.
The Israeli military said there had been a “technical error” with a strike targeting an Islamic Jihad “terrorist” that caused the munition to fall dozens of meters from the target. The incident is under review, the military added.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was aware of the “claim regarding casualties in the area as a result”, adding that it works to mitigate civilian harm “as much as possible” and “regrets any harm to uninvolved civilians”.
Unverified footage shared online after the strike showed bloodied children and lifeless bodies, with screams of panic and desperation.
Residents rushed to the scene and transported the wounded using private vehicles and donkey carts.
The strike came as Israeli aerial attacks across the Gaza Strip have escalated.
A spokesperson for Gaza’s Civil Defence Agency said 19 other Palestinians had been killed on Sunday, in three separate strikes on residential buildings in central Gaza and Gaza City.
Separately, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it had treated more mass casualty cases at its Rafah field hospital in southern Gaza in the last six weeks than in the 12 months before that.
It said that its field hospital in Rafah had received 132 patients “suffering from weapon-related injuries” on Saturday, 31 of whom died.
The “overwhelming majority” of the patients had gunshot wounds, it added, and “all responsive individuals” reported they had been trying to access food distribution sites.
It said that the hospital had treated more than 3,400 weapon-wounded patients and recorded more than 250 deaths since new food distribution sites opened on 27 May – exceeding “all mass casualty cases treated at the hospital” in the year prior.
“The alarming frequency and scale of these mass casualty incidents underscore the horrific conditions civilians in Gaza are enduring,” the ICRC said.
On Saturday, southern Gaza’s Nasser hospital said 24 people were killed near an aid distribution site, where witnesses said Israeli troops had opened fire as people were trying to access food.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said there were “no known injured individuals” from IDF fire near the site. Separately, an Israeli military official said warning shots were fired to disperse people who the IDF believed were a threat.
The UN human rights office said on Friday that it had so far recorded 789 aid-related killings.
It said that of those, 615 were in the vicinity of the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)’s sites, which opened on 27 May and are operated by US private security contractors inside military zones in southern and central Gaza.
The other 183 killings were recorded near UN and other aid convoys.
BBC
