A major fire tore through a house in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing 21 Palestinians including children, officials in the Palestinian enclave said.
The causes of the disaster which occurred in the evening were not immediately known, but the authorities of Hamas, the movement in power in Gaza, said that fuel was stored in the three-storey house in Jabaliya in the north of the Gaza Strip.
"At least 20 bodies of burnt people have been transferred to the hospital"
in Jabaliya, Salah Abou Leila, director of the establishment, told AFP.
An unknown number of people were injured.
According to him, at least seven children are among the dead.
Hamas and the emergency services in Gaza reported 21 deaths in the disaster.
A crowd of people gathered in the street in front of the burning house.
Columns of smoke escaped from the concrete building.
Firefighters then managed to bring the blaze under control, Hamas added.
Police and paramedics were still on the scene after the fire was extinguished.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared a day of
"national mourning"
for the victims of the fire, deploring a
"national tragedy"
, according to his spokesman.
Call for help
The Palestinian Authority is based in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967. It has asked the Israeli authorities to open the Erez crossing in order to be able to treat, if necessary, wounded people outside the Gaza Strip, an enclave subject to to an Israeli blockade for more than 15 years, said an official, Hussein al-Sheikh.
A spokeswoman for COGAT, the body of the Israeli Defense Ministry that oversees civilian activities in the Palestinian Territories, told AFP that Israel would offer
"if needed, any help needed through the passage of d'Erez ".
On Twitter, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said that the State of Israel
“expresses its deep sadness at the terrible tragedy in Gaza”.
“Israel is ready to help residents who have been injured
,” he added.
Jabaliya is a refugee camp but like many of these Palestinian camps, it has for years included buildings and buildings and looks like a locality.
Controlled by the Islamists of Hamas since 2007, the Gaza Strip, a micro-territory populated by some 2.3 million Palestinians, has a battered economy.
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With electricity supplies scarce in the Palestinian enclave, house fires are common as residents seek alternative sources for cooking and lighting, including kerosene lamps.
This year, Gaza has received an average of 12 hours of electricity a day, compared to just seven hours five years ago, according to UN data.
New dangers still threaten in winter when residents burn coal for heating.
The Palestinian enclave is bounded to the north and east by Israeli territory, to the west by the Mediterranean and to the south by Egypt.