At least 20 dead in Israeli attack on Gaza district: medical officials GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - At least 20 Palestinians were killed on Sunday by Israeli shelling in a Gaza neighbourhood, where bodies were strewn in the street and thousands fled toward a hospital packed with wounded, witnesses and health officials said. The mass casualties in the Shejaia district in northeast Gaza appeared to be the heaviest since Israel launched its offensive on the Palestinian territory on July 8 after cross-border rocket strikes by militants intensified. Anguished cries of Did you see Ahmed? Did you see my wife? echoed through the courtyard of Gazas Shifa hospital, where panicked residents of Shejaia gathered in family groups, while inside bodies and wounded lay on blood-stained floors. Video given to Reuters by a local showed at least a dozen mangled corpses, including three children, lying in the rubble-filled streets. At the hospital, about three kilometres (two miles away), elderly men said the Israeli attack was the fiercest they had seen since the 1967 Middle East war, when Israel captured Gaza. Thousands fled the neighbourhood, some by foot and others piling into the backs of trucks and sitting on the hoods of cars filled with families trying to get away. Asked about the attack on Shejaia, an Israeli military spokeswoman said: Two days ago, residents of Shejaia received recorded messages to evacuate the area in order to protect their lives. Hamas, the dominant armed group in the Gaza Strip, had urged people across the territory not to heed the Israeli warnings and abandon their homes. As the tank shells began to land, Shejaia residents called radio stations pleading for evacuation. An air strike on Shejaia home of Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official, killed his son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, hospital officials said. Militants kept up their rocket fire on Israel, with no sign of a diplomatic breakthrough toward a ceasefire in sight. Sirens sounded in southern Israeli towns and in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. There were no reports of casualties. Israel sent ground forces into the Gaza Strip on Thursday after 10 days of air, naval and artillery barrages failed to stop rocket fire. Before news of the casualties in Shejaia, Gaza officials said at least 353 Palestinians, many of them civilians, have been killed in the 13-day conflict. On Israels side, two civilians were killed by cross-border rockets and five soldiers died as fighting increasingly occurred at close-quarters.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 08:41:04 +0000
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