GAZA STRIP:
The Israeli military reported three rockets targeting its territory on Friday from the Gaza Strip, where Palestinian rescuers said Israeli air strikes killed at least 16 people, including children.
The rockets were the latest in a spate of launches by militants in the devastated Palestinian territory, with Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz warning this week of even more intense retaliatory strikes if they continued.
After more than 14 months of war between Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants in Gaza, such launches had become rare. They have intensified since late December as Israel continues a three-month major land and air offensive in the territory’s north.
The military said one of Friday’s rockets “fell adjacent to the community of Nir Am”, in Israel off the northeastern tip of Gaza, while the second landed in an uninhabited area.
Earlier in the day, it said another rocket fired from Gaza had triggered sirens near Beeri, opposite central Gaza.
No injuries were reported.
In Gaza, first responders said they recovered the bodies of 16 Palestinians, several of them children.
The strikes occurred on Gaza City, the central Maghazi refugee camp and the southern city of Rafah, said Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for Gaza’s Civil Defence.
“Friday was a harsh day for the residents of Gaza, particularly in Gaza City, due to the continuous Israeli bombardment,” he told AFP.
Several of the fatalities occurred in strikes and shelling on northern and central Gaza, and two were in the south, he said.
Three children were killed in Israeli shelling in Gaza City’s Zietun neighbourhood, while an air strike killed two people in the southern area of Rafah, Civil Defence said.
The Israeli military said in a statement that during the past day, “the Israeli air force struck approximately 40 Hamas terrorist gathering points” throughout Gaza.
Some of the targets “were embedded in areas that previously served as schools”, it said.
Bassal denied the military’s accusation, and alleged the military were “preventing food and drinking water from reaching dozens of medical staff, patients, and the injured” at the Indonesian Hospital in the town of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip.
