At least 36 people, many members of same family, were killed in the Israeli strike on a Palestinian shelter.
Published On 13 Dec 2024
Palestinian authorities have said that at least 36 people were killed in an Israeli strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, as Israel continues to conduct devastating attacks across the strip.
The Government Media Office in Gaza called the Thursday attack a “barbaric and heinous massacre”, noting that most of those killed hailed from the al-Sheikh Ali family.
“The [Israeli] occupation army knew that this is a residential block with many apartment buildings housing dozens of civilians, children, women and displaced people,” the office said.
Medics told the news agency Reuters that Israeli fire struck a postal office in Nuseirat sheltering displaced Palestinian families, as well as nearby houses.
Photographs from the scene show young children coated with dust and blood in the rubble of a collapsed building.
In Gaza, it is not uncommon for aerial attacks to kill numerous members of the same family, as Israel’s war continues into a second year.
As of October 2024, the one-year anniversary of the war, Israeli strikes had completely wiped out at least 902 entire families in the Strip, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza.
Throughout the war, facilities and buildings sheltering displaced families have been attacked by Israeli forces, who often claim, with little evidence, that they are being used as operation centres for the Palestinian armed group Hamas. Israeli authorities have yet to comment on Thursday’s strike in Nuseirat.
Health facilities, journalists, and humanitarian workers have also reported being persistently targeted by Israeli forces since the fighting began in October 2023, when Hamas launched a deadly attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,100 people, most of them civilians.
In the time since, Israeli attacks have killed more than 44,800 Palestinians in Gaza, more than half of them women and children.
On Thursday, the watchdog group Airwars, which assesses civilian harm from air strikes, released a report stating that Israel’s campaign in Gaza was “by far the most intense, destructive, and fatal conflict for civilians” that