Recovery efforts under way in Gaza City’s Zeitoun after family of five killed in Israeli strike
Video posted on social media and verified by Al Jazeera shows rescue crews digging through the rubble of a destroyed home with their bare hands in the Gaza City neighbourhood.
In one video, deemed too graphic to include in this live page, the hair of a young boy can be seen emerging from the rubble, as his lifeless body is slowly dug out from under the ruins of his family’s home.
Israeli strikes killed him, his two siblings and their mother and father this evening.
Israel’s ceasefire violations a ‘real test’ for US, UNSC
Israel’s ceasefire violations in Gaza are a “real test” for the both United States and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), a political analyst has said after Israeli attacks in the enclave killed at least 25 Palestinians today.
“Israel has a very different definition of what a ceasefire is than the rest of the world,” Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute, told Al Jazeera.
Speaking from Portland, Maine in the United States, he noted that Israel had established a precedent by bombing Lebanon, despite a ceasefire being in place there for more than a year.
“The same is happening in the Gaza Strip,” Elgindy said.
“Barely two days after the UNSC has codified the ceasefire essentially into international law, Israel seems to be testing both the international community and the limits of that resolution by continuing to bomb in Gaza,” he added.
Elgindy argued that the US and UNSC need to “send a very clear public message to Israel that this is not acceptable”.
Hamas decries latest Israeli air strikes, rejects Israeli claim of inciting attack
Hamas has released a statement condemning what it calls Israel’s “horrific massacre” in the cities of Gaza and Khan Younis.
The group said it regarded today’s Israeli air strikes on Gaza — which have killed at least 28 Palestinians, including women and children — as a “serious escalation”.
It also denied Israel’s claim that Hamas fighters had fired at Israeli troops first, prompting it to respond with air strikes.
The Israeli claim was “a weak and exposed attempt to justify their ongoing crimes and violations”, said Hamas, who noted that more than 300 Palestinians have now been killed since the Gaza ceasefire was signed last month.
“The policy of demolishing and blowing up houses, and the closure of the Rafah land crossing, has continued, in blatant Israeli defiance of the American and regional guarantor,” it added.
