Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Al Arabiy (second right) and Senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah (second left) stand next to the bed of a Palestinian boy, who was wounded in an Israeli air strike, at a hospital in Gaza City, yesterday.
GAZA CITY/tel aviv: Two cameramen from Hamas-owned Al Aqsa TV were among six people killed in Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip, raising yesterday’s death toll to 20, a Hamas spokesman said.
Health officials said a total of more than 125 people had been killed and over 1,000 wounded since Israel began its relentless bombing campaign on November 14 in a bid to stamp out cross-border rocket fire by militants.
“Two cameramen from Al Aqsa TV have been killed: Mahmud Komi and Hossam Salama,” health ministry spokesman Ashraf Al Qudra said, saying the strike hit a car in Gaza City’s Nasser area that was clearly marked as a press vehicle. The Israeli army had no comment on the apparent targeting of a press vehicle, confirming only that the air force had carried several attacks in the area.
“We attacked two terrorist squads in northern Gaza: one was adjacent to a weapons storage site that was also a missile launching site; the other was just a terror squad,” a spokeswoman said.
Qudra said three more people were killed in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighbourhood, and another person died in an air strike on the northern town of Beit Hanun. “That takes the total today to 20,” he said. An earlier strike on a car in the Sabra neighbourhood of central Gaza City killed six people and wounded two others, he said.
Separately, the Hamas ambulance service announced that two children had died in a strike on Gaza City’s Zeitun neighbourhood, with a statement saying they had arrived at the city’s Shifa hospital “in pieces.”
During the morning, Israeli warplanes killed another six people, ending a night of relative calm in which no-one died for the first time since the start of the campaign six days ago.
One was killed in Safina, just north of Gaza City, and another in a strike on Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. Elsewhere, 15-year-old Yahya Mohammed Awad was killed as he hunted birds near the beach when a missile hit the northern Sudaniya area, and three men died in the nearby town of Beit Lahiya and in Mughraqa, just south of Gaza City.
An Israeli civilian was killed by rocket fire from Gaza yesterday, shortly after the army said a soldier died in a Palestinian rocket attack. A defence ministry spokesman said the strike had killed Alayaan Salem Al Nabari, a Bedouin from the southern Negev desert. Earlier in the day, the military confirmed a soldier was killed by rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, in Eshkol regional council, flanking the southern part of the Israel-Gaza border.
The deaths raised to five the number of Israelis killed in Gaza rocket fire since November 14. Last Thursday, a rocket strike on the Israeli town of Kiryat Malachi hit a house, killing two men and a woman. Overnight, the Israeli military said it attacked about 100 targets, including “a financial institution used by Hamas.”
Palestinian officials confirmed that the National Islamic Bank in Gaza City, which was set up by the Islamist movement that runs Gaza, was severely damaged in a raid. Hamas officials and witnesses also said that strikes hit the homes of several leaders within its armed wing, the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades. Monday was the bloodiest day of the Israeli operation, with 33 people killed.
The head of the Arab League said on a visit to Gaza yesterday that the world should focus on ending the Israeli occupation instead of finding a truce to the current violence. “The real problem is not a truce,” Nabil Al Arabi told reporters as he led Arab nation foreign ministers to the Gaza Strip on a solidarity mission.
“The real problem that the Arab and Islamic countries and all friendly countries in the world must focus on is ending the occupation,” the Arab League chief said. The comments came as representatives from more than 10 Arab nations came to Gaza from Egypt to show their support for the Hamas government amid Israel’s seven-day air assault and discussions of a possible ground invasion. Hamas official said the group included representatives from countries including Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia, Turkey, and the foreign minister of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority.
Agencies
