Israeli strikes kill 40 in Gaza Strip
GAZA CITY: Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli strikes on Monday killed at least 40 people across the Palestinian territory, which has been under an Israeli aid blockade for more than 50 days.
Israel resumed its military campaign in the Gaza Strip on March 18. A ceasefire agreement that had largely halted the fighting for two months before that collapsed over disagreements between Israel and Hamas.
Civil defence official Mohammed al Mughayyir said that 40 people had been killed since dawn on Monday.
They included eight people who were killed in an Israeli strike on the Abu Mahadi family home in Jabalia, in the north of the territory.
"They were sleeping in their homes, feeling safe, when missiles hit... this scene makes the body shiver," said Abdul Majeed Abu Mahadi, 67, who added that his brother was killed in the attack.
"If a person looked at this scene, they would have seen children, women and elderly men cut into pieces, it makes the heartache, but what can we do?"
The civil defence agency reported that another 10 people were killed in an Israeli strike on the Al Ghamari family home in the Al Sudaniya area northwest of Gaza City.
A strike on the Al Agha family home killed eight others in an area of Khan Yunis in the south, it added.
Fourteen others were killed in four separate strikes across the territory, the civil defence said, including one that hit a tent sheltering displaced people in the Al Shafii camp, west of Khan Yunis.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
The health ministry in Gaza said on Monday that at least 2,222 people have been killed since Israel resumed strikes, bringing the overall death toll since the war broke out to 52,314.
Meanwhile, a top Palestinian official told the International Court of Justice that Israel was blocking humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza as a "weapon of war", at the start of a week of hearings at the UN's top court.
Israel is not participating at the ICJ but hit back immediately, dismissing the hearings as "part of the systematic persecution and delegitimisation" of the country.
The ICJ is hearing dozens of nations and organisations to draw up a so-called advisory opinion on Israel's humanitarian obligations to Palestinians, more than 50 days into its total blockage on aid entering war-ravaged Gaza. Top Palestinian official Ammar Hijazi told judges that "all UN-supported bakeries in Gaza have been forced to shut their doors".
"Nine of every 10 Palestinians have no access to safe drinking water. Storage facilities of the UN and other international agencies are empty," added Hijazi. — Agencies
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