Gazans mourn 33 Palestinians killed in attack that Israel says targeted militant leader
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Some 33 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike on Dec 12 on a post office where they had been sheltering in the Gaza Strip.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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GAZA/CAIRO – Dozens of relatives wept and recited verses from the Quran, Islam’s holy book, at a hospital in the Gaza Strip on Dec 13 before burying some of the 33 Palestinians killed in an Israeli air strike on a post office where they had been sheltering.
Medics said families displaced by the 14-month-old conflict had sought refuge at the postal facility in Nuseirat camp. The attack late on Dec 12 damaged several houses nearby.
Israel said it was targeting a senior Islamic Jihad member when it hit the structure.
Some of the bodies gathered at Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat were wrapped in white shrouds and others in blankets from home. The families accompanied them on a walk to their graves.
“They have killed the hope and optimism,” said Mr Suheil Mattar, whose grandchildren and daughter-in-law were killed. “Every time things happen and we say there will be a truce, and we will rest... After that, they change their minds, they change their minds, we don’t know why,” Mr Mattar said.
Months of ceasefire efforts by Arab mediators, Egypt and Qatar, backed by the United States, have failed to conclude a deal between the two warring sides.
Israel said it had targeted an Islamic Jihad leader accused of attacks on Israeli civilians and troops. It accused the militant group of exploiting the civilian infrastructure and population as a human shield for its activities.
It did not identify the Islamic Jihad member by name.
Nuseirat is one of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic camps originally for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war around the establishment of Israel. Today, it is part of a dense urban area crowded with displaced people from throughout the enclave.
“We’ve seen absolutely horrific images from the scene,” Ms Louise Wateridge, a senior emergency officer for the UN Palestinian relief agency, told a UN press briefing in Geneva by video link from Nuseirat on Dec 13.
“There are parents looking for their children, children covered in dust and blood, looking for their parents, multiple injuries on top of the casualties reported and people still buried under the rubble,” she said.
On Dec 13, Palestinian health officials said at least 12 people were killed in separate Israeli air strikes across the enclave, including three in a tent housing a displaced family in Khan Younis and a local journalist in Gaza City.
Palestinians fleeing Al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza on Dec 11.
PHOTO: AFP
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in Tel Aviv on Dec 12 that he believed a deal on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release may be close as Israel had signalled it was ready and there were signs of movement from Hamas.
The war in the Palestinian enclave began after Hamas gunmen stormed into Israel on Oct 7, 2023
Since then, Israel’s military has levelled swathes of Gaza, driving nearly all of its 2.3 million people from their homes, giving rise to deadly hunger and disease and killing more than 44,900 people, according to the Palestinian health authorities. REUTERS
