Taghreed Saadeh
At least 13 Palestinians, including four children and four women, were killed early this morning and 20 others were injured in a series of Israeli occupation airstrikes ushering in a new aggression on the besieged Gaza Strip.
Local resources said a series of Israeli occupation airstrikes targeted several homes and residential buildings across the besieged Gaza Strip, resulting in the murder of Jihad Ghannam, 62, Khaled Al-Buheiti, 44, and Tareq Izz al-Din, in addition to members of their households, including children and women.
It later updated the total killed to 13 and said among them were four children and four women, and that 20 were injured, some of them critically, among them three children and seven women.
Jordan, Egypt and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) today condemned in separate statements the Israeli aggression on the besieged Gaza Strip that resulted in the killing of women and children, calling for ending the Israeli attacks against the Palestinians.
Jordanian Foreign Ministry spokesman Sanan Majali called on the international community to act immediately to stop the Israeli aggression and provide protection for the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the rest of the occupied territories.
Egypt’s Foreign Ministry also condemned the attack that caused the death of 13 Palestinians, including women and children, and raids into Palestinian towns in the West Bank, the latest was the assault this morning on Nablus.
It said that Egypt rejects such attacks, which are contrary to international law and United Nations charter, and inflame the situation in a way that may spiral out of control in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The OIC also said in a statement that this “heinous crime” committed by the occupying power this morning in Gaza left 13 dead, including children and women, and the injury of more than 20 others, and considered it a blatant violation of international law and international humanitarian law.
It held Israeli occupation “fully responsible for the repercussions of the continuation of these crimes, aggressions and organized terrorism that threaten to undermine security and stability in the region,” calling on the international community “to shoulder its responsibilities and provide international protection to the Palestinian people, and to hold the Israeli occupation accountable for all its crimes and violations against the Palestinian people, their land and holy sites.”
From his side, United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland, today condemned the death of Palestinian civilians in the Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip this morning.
“I am deeply alarmed by developments in Gaza after Israel launched a military operation this morning targeting members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement (PIJ),” he said in a statement.
“The Israeli airstrikes inside Gaza resulted in the killing of 13 Palestinians, including three members of PIJ, a doctor, five women and four children, and more than 20 injured. I condemn the deaths of civilians in the Israeli airstrikes. This is unacceptable.”
Wennesland urged “all concerned to exercise maximum restraint and avoid an escalation. I remain fully engaged with all sides in an attempt to avoid a broader conflict with devastating consequences for all.”
The Palestinian presidency today condemned Israel’s escalation in the aggression against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
“We condemn this dangerous Israeli escalation against our people, which targeted children, women, and homes in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including Jerusalem, the latest of which was the killing of 13 civilians, including women and children, in the Gaza Strip, and the injury of 13 people from bullets in Nablus, in addition to the ongoing storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque,” said the official presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh.
“We hold the Israeli government fully responsible for this dangerous escalation that drags the region into the square of violence, tension and instability,” he said.
Abu Rudeineh warned the US administration against allowing Israel “to persist in its continuous crimes against the Palestinian people, especially as they affect children, women, and sanctities.”
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh today strongly condemned what he described as “the horrific massacre” committed by the Israeli occupation authorities against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip in which 13 people were killed, describing the aggression as organized state terrorism.
“The aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip is organized state terrorism and an attempt to export the internal crisis that the government of extremism in Israel suffers from,” said the Prime Minister in a statement, adding that the aggression was “a practical translation of the doctrine of killing, incineration, and genocide, which those in power in Israel have long professed.”
Shtayyeh considered the aggression against the Gaza Strip “an extension of the Nakba (catastrophe) that befell our people in 1948, and a continuation of the aggression against cities, towns, villages, and refugee camps in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem, the latest of which was the storming of the city of Nablus this morning and the injury of a number of the city’s residents, including children, one of them was described as serious, as part of a systematic policy aimed at terrifying our people to discourage them from continuing their struggle to obtain their legitimate rights, foremost of which is their right to self-determination and the establishment of their independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.”
He called on the United Nations; which is getting ready to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nakba for the first time in its history, to condemn the aggression against the Gaza Strip and “the continuous massacres against our people, and unify the standards in dealing with the crimes committed by the leaders of Israel, and not allowing them to escape punishment.”
In northern West Bank city of Nablus, Israeli occupation forces shot and injured 13 Palestinians while many others suffered from inhaling toxic tear gas, and detained two people, according to medical and local sources.
Ahmad Jibril, head of the ambulance and emergency department in the Red Crescent, said 12 people were this morning injured by Israeli gunfire, including a 14-year-old child shot in the chest, during an army military raid into the old city of Nablus and taken to hospitals where the child was reported in stable condition, while 75 others suffered suffocation from inhaling tear gas. Two were also detained.
Two schools in the vicinity of the old city were evacuated following the army shooting of a heavy barrage of tear gas in the area.
Local sources said that the Israeli forces raided al-Qaryoun area in Nablus and surrounded a house sparking clashes during which several people were shot by live bullets.
In the same context, seven siblings were among 12 Palestinians the Israeli occupation forces detained this morning in a raid at their homes in the occupied West Bank, according to local and Palestinian security sources.
Local sources said that seven siblings were rounded up at their home in the town of Yatta, south of the city of Hebron, while two others were detained in Hebron city.
Three others were detained in the Ramallah governorate, two of them from the village of al-Mughayyer, northeast of Ramallah city, and one from Aroura, north of Ramallah, detained at an army checkpoint outside Ramallah.