Another round of Israeli airstrikes bombed four houses on Wednesday in Rafah, on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, where more than a million Palestinians are sheltering in the last refuge of the besieged enclave.
The Health Ministry said on Wednesday that at least 32,490 people have been killed in more than five months of war between Israel and Hamas. That number includes at least 76 deaths in the past 24 hours, the ministry said in a statement, and 74,889 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began on 7 October.
Fighting has been taking place since last week around the territory’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, and more recently near two hospitals in the main southern city of Khan Younis, Al-Amal and Nasser.
Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles have also amassed around Nasser Hospital, Gaza’s health ministry said, adding that gunfire was being fired but no raid had yet taken place. The Palestinian Red Crescent warned that thousands of people were trapped and “their lives are in danger”.
Talks in Qatar for a truce and prisoner release, involving US and Egyptian mediators, have so far failed, with Israel and Hamas blaming each other.
Mussa Dhaheer, who watched from below as neighbours helped rescuers lower a victim in a black body bag from the top floor, said he woke up to the blast, kissed his terrified daughter and rushed outside to see the destruction. His father, 75, and mother, 62, were among the dead. He said:
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say. I can’t make sense of what happened. My parents. My father with his displaced friends who came from Gaza City. They were all together, when suddenly they were all gone like dust.
According to Jamil Abu Houri, at the other site of the bombing, the intensification of air strikes is Israel’s way of showing its defiance of a UN Security Council resolution passed last week demanding an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
He further fears a ground attack on Rafah, which Israel has been threatening to carry out for weeks, despite assurances from its closest ally Washington that it would cause a humanitarian catastrophe. Abu Houri said:
The bombing has increased, and they have threatened us with an incursion, and they say that have been given the green light for the Rafah incursion. Where is the Security Council Look at our little ones. Look at our children. Where should we go? Where should we go?
Another Israeli airstrike in Rafah on Wednesday afternoon killed four Palestinians including a woman and a child and injured other residents, Gaza health authorities said.
West of Gaza City in the northern enclave, seven people were killed in an airstrike on a residential building, health officials said.
