FIVE DEAD INCLUDE 2 WOMEN AND THEIR DAUGHTERS
An official at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital told AFP it received at dawn the bodies of five people and a number of injured following an airstrike in the Rimal neighbourhood.
It said the dead were two women and their daughters, as well as a man.
Mahmoud Bassal, the spokesman for the civil defence agency which operates as a rescue force under Hamas authority, said two missiles directly hit the apartment, causing a fire and damaging the building.
Two of the five victims were Christians, the hospital director said.
Mourners gathered later on Saturday at the small Greek Orthodox church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City for the funeral of the two women, identified as 56-year-old Maysaa Abu Daoud and her 36-year-old daughter Mary Al-Najjar.
Ihab Ayad, a relative of the women, said that they had been “minding their own business” at home when Israel carried out the strike.
“We didn’t hurl stones or fire rockets. If any child among us carries a stone, they call him a terrorist, a murderer. But they possess the most powerful arsenal and destroy everything,” he said.
Around 1,000 Christians, most of them Orthodox, live in the Palestinian territory. A larger Palestinian Christian community lives in the West Bank, although emigration has increased since the start of the war.
The Hamas-led Oct 7 attack killed 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
The massive Israeli offensive in response has left most of Gaza in ruins and killed more than 74,200 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which is under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.
Israeli forces have killed more than 1,440 people since the announcement of the ceasefire a year ago, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
The Israeli military has identified five deaths in its ranks over the same period, as well as the death of one civilian contractor.
