The Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip reported on Sunday that 26 bodies, some of them women and children, were recovered in an Israeli airstrike that targeted a residential building in the town of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip.
Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal told Agence France-Presse, "26 martyrs, including children and women, were recovered, while at least 59 citizens are still missing, most of them children and women, under the rubble of a five-story building that was targeted at dawn (Sunday) in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip."
Basal added that the airstrike "occurred at around 2 a.m. today, but the artillery shelling prevented paramedics and citizens from reaching the site for more than six hours."
He explained that "Israeli tanks and armored vehicles are located hundreds of meters away from the building and are firing at the paramedics, and Israeli drones are also firing, which is hindering the rescue of the injured."
The Civil Defense in Gaza announced on Sunday morning that at least 20 people, including four women and three children, were killed in Israeli airstrikes on areas in the central and southern Gaza Strip.
"Twenty martyrs, including four women and three children," said Basal, explaining that 10 of them were killed in a missile strike launched by the Israeli air force that "targeted the Aql family home in the Bureij camp" in the central Gaza Strip.
In Beit Lahia, Jaber Ghabayen (20 years old), a relative of the owner of the targeted house, said, "I heard the strike from the warplanes, the area shook, I was at home with my relatives, we all felt that death was close to us."
He added, "What can we do? We have no choice, there are no militants in the house and yet they bombed it."
Eyewitnesses reported that the Israeli warplanes fired two missiles seconds apart at the building that was housing more than 75 citizens, all of whom were displaced.
The strike completely destroyed the building and razed it to the ground, and caused significant damage to a number of neighboring houses.
Dozens of citizens gathered around the targeted house, some of whom placed the bodies of the dead on the ground.
The bodies of many of the dead, wrapped in blankets, were placed on the side of the road, while a number of citizens carried the bodies on a donkey cart to bury them in a site near the house.
For its part, the Hamas movement condemned in a statement the bombing of the building in Beit Lahia, considering it a "massacre... and an escalation in the war of extermination and revenge against defenseless civilians."
The war in the Gaza Strip broke out after an unprecedented attack launched by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, the majority of whom were civilians, according to a count by Agence France-Presse based on official Israeli figures. This toll includes those who died or were killed in captivity.
During the attack, the militants kidnapped 251 people, 97 of whom are still in Gaza, including 34 who the Israeli army says are dead.
Israel has since responded with devastating bombing and ground operations in the Gaza Strip, killing 43,846 people, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run health ministry.
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