Israeli army bombs police headquarters and security buildings in Gaza as authorities say 65 Palestinians killed, including 16 children, since escalation began.
Hamas, the group that rules the Gaza Strip, launched a new barrage of rockets into Israel after Israeli missiles destroyed a third tower in the besieged coastal territory.
Heavy bombardment on the Gaza Strip continued into Wednesday as Israeli forces continued to launch intensive raids on various locations. Hamas confirmed that its Gaza City commander, Bassem Issa, was killed in an Israeli airstrike along with other senior members of the group.
Local sources said Israeli fighter jets bombed sites belonging to Palestinian armed groups, in addition to security and police buildings. In Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood, a pregnant woman, Reema Telbani and her child were killed by an Israeli attack on their home.
Gaza’s ministry of health said the overall death toll since the latest offensive began stood at 65, including 16 children. More than 300 others have been wounded.
Six Israelis, including one child, have also been killed. The Israeli army said that about 1,500 rockets have been fired from Gaza towards various locations in Israel and they have added reinforcements near the enclave’s eastern lands.
Calls for more action from Palestinian leadership
Human rights lawyer Noura Erakat called on Palestinian leaders to act as tensions continued to rise.
“Right now, we’re all paying attention because of the crisis, because of the confrontation, because settlers backed by the state, by the judiciary as well as the police are about to forcibly remove Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah and set off across the boundaries separating Palestinians from one another,” she told Al Jazeera.
“But even in the absence of this culmination point, the violence that we should be concerned with is constant and debilitating.”
She said that Palestinian leadership has been “lacking in many respects”.
“I think it has for a very long time failed to represent the Palestinian people adequately … Palestinian official leadership at this point should be pivoting to encourage diplomatic capitals to impose sanctions on Israel, to have a full front effort for accountability, to mobilise into a different discourse far from sitting down, peace mediation and instead towards justice, accountability and pressure,” said Erakat.
Al Jazeera
Comments About This Article
Please fill the fields below.