GAZA: Zionist air attacks across the Gaza Strip killed at least 38 Palestinians on Wednesday, most of them in a strike on a house in Beit Lahia on the northern edge of the enclave, medics said. "At least 22 people, including women and children, were martyred in the massacre committed by the occupation military after it bombed a house belonging to the Abu al-Tarabish family near Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza,” civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
Bassal said that a Zionist jet had fired three missiles at the house around midnight, adding the strike completely destroyed the three-storey structure. More than 50 people were living in the house, he said, with many still under the rubble. "Rescuers were unable to evacuate the martyrs or the wounded until this morning,” said Jaber Alian, 30, who witnessed the strike from a house near the hospital.
In nearby Beit Hanoun, also part of the area under siege, medics said a Zionist airstrike killed and wounded several people, without giving an exact toll. Rescue workers said several people were trapped under rubble. Earlier on Wednesday, at least seven Palestinians were killed and several others wounded in a Zionist airstrike on a house in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, medics told Reuters.
The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service and medics said nine other people were killed in three separate Zionist airstrikes on two houses and a crowd in Gaza City, including journalist Eman Al-Shanti, her husband, and three of their children. Al-Shanti was the 193rd journalist killed by the Zionist entity since the start of the Gaza war in Oct 2023, the Palestinian Union of Journalists said.
In a statement, the Zionist military said it killed in separate airstrikes two senior, armed Hamas commanders who had taken a leading role in the Oct 7, 2023 cross-border attack on the Zionist entity. It said one of the two, Fahmi Selmi, was a senior elite unit commander in Hamas. The military said the second man, Salah Dahman, had served as the head of Hamas’ paragliding unit in the Jabalia area.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Zionist military said two rockets had been fired from the central Gaza Strip into the Zionist entity but fell in open areas and caused no injuries. The rocket salvo demonstrated the ability of Gaza militants to continue to stage rocket attacks despite 14 months of devastating Zionist aerial and ground offensives.
Citing rocket launches from the area, the Zionist military ordered residents in the Al-Maghazi camp in central Gaza to evacuate. It urged them to head towards a humanitarian-designated zone near the Mediterranean coast. Palestinian and United Nations officials say there are no safe areas in the widely devastated territory.
Fighting has focused on the densely urbanized north, where Zionist armored forces have been operating in Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia and Jabalia since Oct 5. Palestinian officials and residents accuse the Zionist entity of seeking to depopulate the area to create a buffer zone along the northern end of the coastal territory. The Zionist military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 44,800 Palestinians and displaced most of the 2.3 million population. – Reuters