GAZA CITY: Israel bombed a mosque and destroyed homes of Palestinians yesterday, the seventh day of its murderous attack on the Gaza Strip. Over a dozen people died in 30 more airstrikes, including three brothers aged between 7 and 10, bringing the death toll to 430. At least 2,250 people have been wounded.
The brothers, Iyad, Mohammed and Abdelsattar Al-Astal, died in a missile strike as they played near their home in Al-Qarara, close to the city of Khan Younis, medics and witnesses said. Two of the children were decapitated.
“These injuries are not survivable,” said Madth Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital who could not save another boy who had both feet blown off. “This is murder. This is a child,” he said.
The UN food agency called the situation in the coastal strip appalling. “The current situation in Gaza is appalling, and many basic food items are no longer available on the market,” the World Food Programme’s representative in the occupied Palestinian territory, Christine van Nieuwenhuyse, said in a statement.
The Rome-based agency appealed for $9 million in emergency funds “to meet foreseen additional food needs” as the conflict raged unabated.
“As an emergency response to alleviate the suffering of families living close to areas affected by conflict,” the WFP began distributing bread to some 15,000 first-time recipients in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza, Van Nieuwenhuyse said. “This area ... is one of the poorest and most heavily affected by the recent conflict,” she added.
The air raids have hampered humanitarian efforts targeting 265,000 people, the statement said. “The scarcity of wheat has meant that the majority of mills and bakeries have stopped working in Gaza, and there is an acute shortage of bread, the staple food for Palestinian people,” it added.
Israel allowed hundreds of Palestinians with foreign passports to flee besieged Gaza ahead of an imminent invasion. Some 300 left through the Erez crossing.
“There is no water, no electricity, no medicine. It’s hard to survive. Gaza is destroyed,” said Jawaher Haggi, a 14-year-old Palestinian-American. She said her uncle was killed in an airstrike when he tried to pick up some medicine for her cancer-stricken father, who died of his illness several days later.
Many of the evacuees were foreign-born women married to Palestinians and their children. Spouses who did not hold foreign citizenship were not allowed out.
Israeli warplanes dropped thousands of fliers over the territory, urging Palestinians to report to Israeli authorities the location of fighters firing rockets.
“Rocket launchers constitute a risk for you and your families,” said the flier, written in Arabic. It provided a telephone number and an e-mail address for anyone wishing to inform on their neighbors.
“For your security we ask you to be extremely discreet when contacting us,” the text said.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States and key world allies were pushing hard for a “durable and sustainable” cease-fire in Gaza, but that she was not planning an emergency visit to the region.
— With input from agencies
