TEL AVIV: Israeli airstrikes killed at least 50 Palestinians in Gaza on Tuesday (May 20), local medics said, as Israel continues its bombardment of the strip despite mounting international pressure to stop military operations and allow unimpeded deliveries of aid.
The strikes fell across Gaza, and medics said that the sites hit included two homes where women and children were among the 18 dead, and a school housing displaced families.
Israel’s military, which on Monday warned those in the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis to evacuate to the coast as it prepared for an “unprecedented attack”, had no immediate comment.
In Gaza City, Reuters footage showed men, women and children sifting through the rubble of the Daraj neighbourhood school where they had been sheltering, and where charred pieces of clothing and a red teddy bear lay among scattered belongings.
At the nearby Al-Ahli Hospital men performed prayers over bodies wrapped in white shrouds, before carrying them to their graves.
“What is our fault? What is the fault of children? What is the fault of the women we found on the stairs with their hair and clothes torn and burned?” said Omar Ahel, who had been sheltering at the school. “By God, this is injustice.”
Outside a Khan Younis hospital, Younis Abu Sahloul said his brother, sister-in-law, and their four children were killed in an airstrike that hit a nearby camp sheltering displaced Palestinians without prior warning.
Israeli strikes have killed more than 500 people in the past eight days as the military campaign has intensified, medics in Gaza say.
