At least 33 people, including 10 women and 13 children, have died this Sunday in Gaza, a few hours before a meeting of the UN Security Council, in the deadliest attack launched by Israel since the beginning of the attacks. hostilities, last Monday, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The operation, which according to an Israeli army spokesman was directed against the headquarters of the Hamas intelligence center in the north of the Strip, has razed three buildings. The same military source stated that the premises of the Islamist militia "were next to a kindergarten." "This shows that Hamas endangers civilians by locating military installations in densely populated areas."Gazans rescue teams have searched the rubble for bodies and survivors all morning. In the early morning, the more than 120 rockets launched from the Palestinian enclave fired alerts in southern and central Israel, particularly in the overcrowded area of Tel Aviv, where they have caused at least a dozen injuries among residents who do not they were able to reach the bomb shelters in time.
The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, has warned the parties in conflict that "indiscriminate attacks against civilians violate international law." Amnesty International and other humanitarian organizations have asked the International Criminal Court, which investigates alleged crimes committed by the Israeli Army and Gazans militias since 2014, to incorporate the latest cases of mass bombings. Pope Francis has called for an end to the fighting this Sunday, when a meeting of the UN Security Council is scheduled to address the situation in Israel and Palestine.
The escalation of war has already claimed the lives of at least 181 people in Gaza (including 52 children and 31 women), and caused 1,200 injuries; and 10 other people in Israel (including two minors), with a balance of 200 injured. The Israeli Army has increased the bombardments on the Gaza Strip, with more than a thousand air operations, while the Hamas militias have redoubled the firing of rockets after nearly three thousand launches. Since the 2014 war, which lasted for two months, the two sides had not clashed as intensely.
At least 10 members of the same family died on Saturday in the Al Shati refugee camp, in one of the Israeli aviation offensives, when the building in which they lived collapsed. In another airstrike on the same day, the military shot down a 12-story building in Gaza City that housed the offices of the US news agency Associated Press and the Qatari television network Al Jazeera.
It is the fifth office tower bombed by Israel in the offensive.
The occupants of the building received an eviction order before the attack took place.
In a statement, the Armed Forces justified the attack by claiming that some units of the building were used by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad to store military material, although they did not present evidence that it was a legitimate military objective.
On Saturday night, a Doctors Without Borders clinic in Gaza City was also damaged by Israeli aviation bombardment, leaving a sterilization room unusable.
Last night, an #MSF clinic where we provide trauma and burn treatment in the city of #Gaza was damaged by Israeli aerial bombardment of the surrounding area, leaving a sterilization room unusable and a damaged waiting area.
👉Follow the thread: pic.twitter.com/VRLrVGIrK1
- MSF Press (@MSF_Prensa) May 16, 2021
US President Joe Biden telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday night, expressing his "concern for the safety of journalists" and lamenting the deaths of Israelis and Palestinians, "including children."
He also reiterated Washington's support for "Israel's right to defend itself" against Hamas attacks.
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The Israeli leader, for his part, declared that Israel will continue to respond "vigorously" to the attacks "until security is restored" for its citizens.
The Security Cabinet, the government body that decides the strategy in the event of an armed conflict, plans to meet this Sunday, before the start of a Jewish religious holiday at sunset.
Biden also spoke, for the first time, by telephone with the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, whom he asked to help calm the situation, while expressing "the need for Hamas to stop firing rockets at Israel."
The Gaza Strip has been ruled
de facto
by Islamists since 2007, when they ousted Fatah, President Abbas's party, from power.
While the contenders continue to engage in the logic of war, the mediation of Egypt, Qatar and the United States is struggling to try to reach a ceasefire agreement, so far without results. Official sources quoted by the Israeli daily
Haaretz
have assured that increasing international pressure is being exerted on the Netanyahu government to stop the fighting in view of the high number of civilian victims.
The Israeli aviation attacked on Saturday the house of Jalil Hayya, Hamas's deputy political chief in the Strip, and this Sunday it bombed the home of Yaya Sinwar, the head of the Islamist organization inside Gaza.
Both are presumably hidden since the start of hostilities in bomb shelters.
The historical leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniya, is in Qatar, under the protection of the Doha Government.
Firefighters inspect an area destroyed by a bombing this Sunday in Gaza City.Adel Hana / AP
Meanwhile, anti-aircraft sirens have continued to sound at various points in southern and central Israel, particularly in the Tel Aviv area, where a 50-year-old man was killed on Saturday in the suburb of Ramat Gan when a projectile struck his living place.
The Israeli Army estimated at more than 2,900 rocket fire in the last week, of which 1,150 have been intercepted by the Iron Dome (anti-missile system), with an apparent knockdown rate of less than 50%, since other 450 rockets did not reach Israeli territory due to launch failures.
The antimissile system does not activate if the radars detect the fall of the projectile on an uninhabited area.
The Israeli Army has also deployed reinforcements in the West Bank, where since Friday 12 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces on the 73rd anniversary of the Nakba (disaster, in Arabic) that commemorates the exodus of more than 700,000 Palestinians in 1948 to the advance of the troops of the newborn State of Israel.
