Israel has hit an Orthodox Christian church where others hundreds of Christians and Muslims had been sheltering, as it made clear that a command to invade Gaza was expected soon, Reuters reports.
This is even as the Secretary General of the United Nations visited the crossing between the besieged Gaza Strip and Egypt, and said humanitarian aid must be allowed across as soon as possible.
Israel has vowed to wipe out the Hamas Islamist group that rules Gaza, after its gunmen burst through the barrier fence surrounding the enclave on Oct. 7 and rampaged through Israeli towns and kibbutzes, killing 1,400 people, mainly civilians.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has told troops a command to invade would come soon.
Meanwhile, Israel has pounded Gaza with air strikes and put the enclave’s 2.3 million people under a total siege, banning shipments even of food, fuel and medical supplies.
Since Oct. 7, at least 4,137 Palestinians have been killed and 13,000 wounded in Gaza in Israeli strikes, the Palestinian health ministry said.
The U.N. says more than a million have been made homeless.
The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the main Palestinian Christian denomination, said Israeli forces had struck the Church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City, where hundreds of Christians and Muslims had sought sanctuary.
Video from the scene showed a wounded boy being carried from rubble at night. A civil defence worker said two people on upper floors had survived; those on lower floors had been killed and their bodies were still in the rubble.
“They felt they would be safe here. They came from under the bombardment and the destruction, and they said they would be safe here but destruction chased them,” a man cried out.
Gaza’s Hamas-run government media office said 18 Christian Palestinians had been killed, while the health ministry later gave a toll of 16. There was no immediate word from the church on the final death toll. It said targeting churches that were used as shelters for people fleeing bombing was “a war crime that cannot be ignored”.
The Israeli military said part of the church was damaged in a strike on a militant command centre and it was reviewing the incident.
