UPDATE 2 - 4 children among 19 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on northern, southern Gaza Strip

CHANGES HEAD, LEDE; UPDATES DEATH TOLL

By Anadolu staff

At least 19 Palestinians, including several women and children, were killed on Saturday in Israeli attacks targeting areas in both the northern and southern Gaza Strip.

According to Gaza’s Civil Defense, five Palestinians were killed and others wounded in an airstrike near the Dar Al-Arqam School in northwestern Gaza City.

In another statement, Civil Defense confirmed that a woman was killed and several others were wounded in an airstrike that targeted a family home in eastern Gaza City.

Medical sources told Anadolu that 11 Palestinians, including three women and four children, were killed and many others injured in Israeli shelling targeting a house in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood in eastern Gaza city.

In northern Gaza, paramedics reported recovering the body of a Palestinian killed in an artillery strike in Beit Hanoun.

Separately, medical sources reported that one Palestinian was killed and six others were injured in an Israeli bombing of a tent sheltering displaced people in the Al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, an area classified as a “humanitarian safe zone” by the Israeli army.

Eyewitnesses told Anadolu that the Israeli army continued its destruction of residential buildings and entire neighborhoods near the Nitzarim axis, which separates northern and southern Gaza.

Since beginning its Gaza offensive last October, Israel has followed a pattern of declaring certain areas to be “safe zones,” pushing Palestinians to relocate there, yet still attacking them in the zones or even en route to promised safety.

Israel has continued its brutal offensive on Gaza since a Hamas attack last October despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire.

Over 41,000 people, mostly women and children, have since been killed and over 95,000 injured, according to local health authorities.

The Israeli onslaught has displaced almost the entire population of the territory amid an ongoing blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water, and medicine.

* Writing by Ikram Kouachi