CAIRO: An Israeli strike on a post office sheltering Gaza residents killed at least 30 Palestinians and wounded 50, medics said, and the Israeli military said on Friday it had been targeting a senior Islamic Jihad member.
Families displaced by the 14-month-old conflict had sought refuge in the postal facility in the Nuseirat camp, and the strike late on Thursday brought the day's death toll in the enclave to 66, the medics said.
Israel said its target was an Islamic Jihad leader of attacks on Israeli civilians and troops and accused the militant group of exploiting civilian infrastructure and population as a human shield for its activities.
An Israeli military statement said it was reviewing reports on the number of casualties. It did not identify the Islamic Jihad member by name.
Nuseirat is one of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic camps originally for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war around the establishment of Israel. Today, it is part of a dense urban area crowded with displaced people from throughout the enclave.
Earlier on Thursday, two Israeli strikes in southern Gaza killed 13 Palestinians who Gaza medics and Hamas said were part of a force protecting humanitarian aid trucks. Israel's military said they were Hamas fighters trying to hijack the shipment.
Many of those killed in the attacks on Rafah and Khan Yunis had links to Hamas, according to sources close to the militant group.
The Israeli military said in a statement the two air strikes aimed to ensure the safe delivery of humanitarian aid and accused Hamas members of planning to prevent the aid from reaching Gaza civilians who need it.
Armed groups have repeatedly hijacked aid trucks, and Hamas has formed a task force to confront them.
Hamas said Israeli military strikes have killed at least 700 police tasked with securing aid trucks in Gaza since the war began on October 7, 2023.
Separately, the Israeli military on Thursday ordered residents of several districts in the heart of Gaza City to evacuate, saying it would respond to rockets fired from those areas. At nightfall on Thursday, dozens of families streamed out of the areas heading towards the centre of the city.
Months of ceasefire efforts by Arab mediators, Egypt and Qatar, backed by the United States, have failed to conclude a deal between the two warring sides. — AFP
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