23 killed in Israeli air strike on residential block

AFP | Gaza City

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Israel said yesterday its troops are seizing “large areas” in Gaza and making the Palestinian territory “smaller and more isolated”, as an air strike on a residential block killed at least 23 people.

Defence Minister Israel Katz’s comments come weeks into a renewed offensive by the military on the war-battered territory, which has displaced hundreds of thousands, while an aid blockade has revived the spectre of famine for its 2.4 million people. “Large areas are being seized and added to Israel’s security zones, leaving Gaza smaller and more isolated,” Katz said during a visit to the newly announced Morag Corridor between the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Yunis.

Residential building Gaza’s civil defence agency said an air strike on a residential building in Gaza City killed at least 23 people, most of them children or women, while the Israeli military said it targeted a “senior Hamas” fighter.

The strike took place in the Shujaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City, the agency’s spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

“The death toll from the Shujaiya massacre has risen to 23 martyrs, including eight children and eight women,” he said, adding that more than 60 people were wounded.

“There are still people trapped under the rubble.”

Ayub Salim, a 26-year-old Shujaiya resident, told AFP he witnessed the strike on the four-storey block.

Multiple missiles He said the area was hit with “multiple missiles” and was “overcrowded with tents, displaced people and homes”.