By Hosni Nadim
GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) - An Israeli airstrike on a residential apartment in Gaza City killed seven Palestinians and injured others, including children and women, on Thursday, according to Gaza's Civil Defense Agency.
The agency reported that its teams “retrieved seven bodies: three children, three women, and a man, and dealt with several injuries following an Israeli attack on an apartment in the Al-Nafaq Street, near Al-Tabeen school.”
While the agency did not specify the nature of the injuries, witnesses told Anadolu that civil defense crews searched for more victims and survivors under the rubble.
Witnesses also told Anadolu that Israeli artillery continues to shell areas and homes in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood in southeast of Gaza City.
They noted that the artillery shelling caused several fires in homes and properties, with smoke columns visible from the eastern part of the area.
It remains unclear if the artillery shelling in Al-Zaytoun resulted in further casualties or injuries.
The Al-Zaytoun neighborhood is currently witnessing intense clashes between Palestinian resistance factions and the Israeli army.
The al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, said that they had shelled the Israeli forces positioned east of the neighborhood with heavy mortar shells.
Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire.
More than 37,200 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and more than 84,900 others injured, according to local health authorities.
Over eight months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its military operation in Rafah, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.
*Writing by Mohammad Sio