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Health officials in Gaza said Israeli air strikes on Saturday killed at least 24 people in the territory’s north, a day after the International Committee of the Red Cross said 22 people were killed in shelling that damaged its office.
The Gaza City strikes added to at least 120 deaths over the previous 48 hours which the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza reported earlier Saturday.
Dr Mahmud Aliwa of Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City said his facility received 24 bodies after the strikes, which left smoke rising over the city.
Gaza’s civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Basal told AFP that at least 20 were killed in a strike on a house in Al-Tuffah neighborhood, while a strike in Al-Shati refugee camp claimed the lives of four others.
“People were going about their business” when, suddenly, “the whole area was wiped out” in an air strike, said Abu Mahmud al-Kariri, an eyewitness in Al-Shati.
Against a grey backdrop of destruction, men used a donkey cart to remove some of the dead in Al-Tuffah.
Earlier on Saturday, Israel’s military said its fighter jets were striking “two Hamas military infrastructure sites” in the Gaza City area.
The European Union’s foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, on Saturday called for an “independent investigation” into the shelling that damaged the ICRC office.
Jordan, which signed a peace treaty with Israel 30 years ago, condemned what it called Israel’s “systematic targeting” of civilians and relief organizations.
Late Friday, the ICRC said 22 dead and 45 wounded were taken to a Red Cross field hospital after shelling with “heavy calibre projectiles” near its southern Gaza office.
Local ICRC chief William Schomburg told reporters Saturday: “There were piles of dead bodies, blood everywhere” and a “flood of wounded people” seeking help.
