GAZA: Palestinian children die as Israel increases its aerial campaign on the Gaza strip

Record ID: 340270

  • Title: GAZA: Palestinian children die as Israel increases its aerial campaign on the Gaza strip
  • Date: 3rd January 2009
  • Summary: PEOPLE OUTSIDE HOSPITAL MORGUE EXTERIOR OF HOSPITAL
  • Embargoed: 18th January 2009 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Defence / Military
  • Reuters ID: LVA2QS643F3JZ4WAT2SVX9DLJVO5
  • Story Text: Israel presses on relentlessly with more than 30 air strikes, one of which kills three Palestinian children aged between 8 and 12 as they play on a street near the town of Khan Younis in the south of the Strip. One was decapitated. A Norwegian Surgeon says that the airstrikes are murder. A christian girl dies during one of the airstrikes. An IDF spokeswomen says that Israel has all options to use if necessary.
    Palestinian Islamists vowed revenge on Israel on Friday for killing a senior Hamas leader and his family, and said all options including suicide bombs were now open to "strike at Zionist interests everywhere".
    There was no glimmer of a ceasefire on the seventh day of the conflict, in which at least 424 Palestinians have been killed and 2,000 wounded, and four Israelis have been killed by Palestinian rockets.
    Israel pressed on relentlessly with more than 30 air strikes, one of which killed three Palestinian children aged between 8 and 12 as they played on a street near the town of Khan Younis in the south of the Strip. One was decapitated.

    "These injuries is not survivable injuries," said Madth Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor at Gaza's Shifa hospital who could not save another boy who had both feet blown off. "This is a murder. This is a child," he said.
    Islamist fighters fired rockets at Israel's port of Ashkelon one of which blew out windows in an apartment building.
    In Gaza City, a lucky few hundred foreign passport holders boarded buses in the pre-dawn murk to quit the Strip, with the help of the International Committee off the Red Cross, their governments and Israeli compliance.
    They left behind 1.5 million Palestinians unable to escape the conflict, a city waking up to another day of bombs, missiles, flickering electricity, queues for bread, taped-up windows and streets littered with broken glass and debris.
    Hamas leader Fathi Hammad attended the funeral of Nizar Rayyan, who was killed along with four wives and 11 children by an Israeli missile which hit his house on Thursday.
    Rayyan, who mentored suicide bombers and sent one of his sons on a "martyrdom" mission, was the highest ranking Hamas official to be killed in the current offensive. He had called loudly for bombings in Israeli cities.
    Hamas leader and spokesman Ismail Rudwan said that following the death of Rayyan all options were open including martyrdom operations to deter the aggression and to strike Zionist interests everywhere.
    Bracing for protests and retaliatory violence, Israel sealed off the occupied West Bank to deny entry to most Palestinians and beefed up security at checkpoints.
    There were protests by Palestinians in major West Bank cities. In Ramallah, Hamas supporters scuffled with the Fatah faction of Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, taunting them as "collaborators". Elsewhere, protesters stoned soldiers at checkpoints and some were wounded by rubber bullets.
    The death toll rose to 424 as some badly wounded succumbed to their injuries and a morning strike killed two Palestinians in a house Israel said concealed a tunnel and a weapons dump.
    A quarter of the dead are civilians, the U.N. estimates, and some 2,000 Palestinians have been wounded. Gaza rockets have killed four Israelis in the south over the past week.
    Israel's armoured forces remained massed on the Gaza frontier in preparation for a possible ground invasion, despite international calls for a halt to the conflict. An Israeli naval vessel lying offshore fired at a greenhouse in southern Gaza.
    Israeli defense force spokeswomen, Avital Leibowitz, said the operation was continuing.

    "IDF forces, artillery, infantry and others are still on alert waiting near the Gaza strip for any option. Currently the operation is still on going aircraft and navy only. However, all options are still on the table.
    And if we need to operate another option, of course it is available for us," she said.
    Late on Thursday, Israeli war planes bombed the Jabalya mosque. Israeli security officials said it was a meeting place and command post for Hamas militants and the large number of secondary explosions after the strike indicated that rockets, missiles and other weapons had been stored there.
    Nine mosques have had been hit since it began on Saturday.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2011. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register