GAZA – Israel is fully responsible for the continued targeting of civilians in the Gaza Strip, the leader of the Hamas said yesterday.
The Anadolu Agency quoted Ismail Haniyeh as saying in a statement that Israel’s heinous attack on the Al-Shati refugee camp early yesterday was a continuation of the massacres it has carried out in different parts of the besieged Palestinian territory.
At least 10 Palestinians, including eight children, were killed when Israeli warplanes bombed and destroyed a residential house in the Al-Shati refugee camp in western Gaza City.
The Hamas leader said Israel’s massacres in the Gaza Strip “reveal the impotence and failure of the enemy and the dilemma it faces because of the great resistance”.
Haniyeh vowed that Palestinian resistance forces “will keep defending their people and will defeat the enemy army and prevent it from continuing its massacres”.
Israeli air and artillery strikes on Gaza since Monday have killed 145 people including 41 children, and wounded another 1,100, health officials say, the worst violence in the region since 2014.
The air raids on Gaza were preceded by days of tensions and Israeli aggression in occupied East Jerusalem, where hundreds of Palestinians were assaulted by Israeli forces and settlers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood.
Tensions spread from occupied East Jerusalem to Gaza after Palestinian resistance groups there vowed to retaliate for Israeli assaults if they were not halted.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and annexed the entire city in 1980 in a move never recognised by the international community. – Bernama, May 16, 2021
