Fri, January 02, 2009
GAZA, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- Eight Palestinians were killed on Friday, including five children in the ongoing Israeli intensive airstrikes on the Gaza Strip for the seventh consecutive day, doctors and witnesses said.
Palestinian witnesses and medics said that in the most recent Israeli airstrikes carried out on Friday afternoon on a house east of the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, three children were killed and eight civilians wounded.
Witnesses said Israeli warplanes carried out a series of intensive airstrikes on 15 Hamas militants' houses and a mosque allover the Gaza Strip, adding that the buzz of Israeli warplanes, drones and explosions are heard all the time.
They said that a mosque was destroyed in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza Strip, and a house of a senior Hamas militant, called Imad Aqell was destroyed in central Gaza Strip, but no casualties or victims were reported.
Mo'aweya Hassanein, chief of emergency and ambulance services in the Palestinian health ministry, said that eight Palestinians, including five children, were killed in Friday's airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.
He said five were killed in separate airstrikes carried out since Friday morning on houses and mosques in the Gaza Strip.
He added that the death toll since the beginning of the Israeliair offensive on the Gaza Strip on last Saturday, 430 Palestinians were killed and around 2200 wounded, 500 of them are in critical conditions.
Israeli warplanes and naval gunship boats have been shelling the Gaza Strip since last Saturday, where Palestinian militants, mainly Hamas armed wing al-Qassam Brigades, kept launching rockets at Israeli cities and towns.
Hamas movement's spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said in a written statement sent to the press that "targeting houses, mosques and schools shows that the Zionists claims that 'the target is Hamas' are lies and incorrect."
"The Zionist enemy is carrying out awful war crimes against innocent civilians and human beings, so this war is not only against Hamas as they claim, this war is on the entire Gaza Strip," said Barhoum.
He added that "the Zionist occupation is punishing the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip for this fabulous steadfast and for refusing to carry out a coup against their legitimate leadership in Gaza."
