Israeli air strikes on Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, have killed at least 40 people and wounded over 100 others, in one of the deadliest attacks on Palestinians in days.
The majority of those killed and wounded were women and children, according to the government media office in Gaza.
Israeli jets hit four homes in Deir al-Balah on Thursday night, including that of the Attar family, as well as the Yaghi family’s home in the town of al-Zawaida, Wafa news agency reported.
Al-Jazeera’s reporter in Rafah, southern Gaza, said that residential homes in Deir al-Balah were “attacked without any prior warning”.
The Gaza government media office described the attacks as a “heinous massacre”.
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“We hold the American administration and the international community, additionally to Israel, fully responsible for these ongoing crimes, and we call on the free world to immediately put an end to this war of extermination that the Israeli army is waging against civilians,” it said.
Hamas said the “massacre” in central Gaza represented Israel’s “practical response” to ongoing International Court of Justice hearings into Israel’s occupation of Palestine at the Hague.
“The Nazi-Zionist enemy continues its criminal bombing of civilian homes in the Gaza Strip, the latest of which was the barbaric bombing that targeted a residential square in the city of Deir al-Balah on Thursday evening, resulting in the death of about 40 martyrs, all of them women, children,” the Palestinian group said in a statement on Friday.
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“It represents the occupying entity’s practical response to the hearings against it in the International Court of Justice, and confirms to the international community that it is a rogue entity that does not care about human laws and values.”
Hamas is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UK but not designated as such by the UN and most countries.
Elsewhere on Friday morning, an Israeli drone bombed a school run by Unrwa, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, near the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.
It came a day after Israel bombed another Unrwa building housing displaced people in the Jabalia refugee camp in the north.
Israeli forces have killed at least 104 Palestinians and wounded 160 more over the past 24 hours in 10 “massacres”, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
That brought the Palestinian death toll in 137 days to more than 29,514, with over 69,616 people wounded and at least 7,000 missing, who are believed to be dead and buried under rubble.
Over 70 percent of the victims are children and women, according to health officials.
