GAZANS did their best to celebrate the end of Ramadan in the driving rain on Wednesday, as the war raged on with 14 killed, including children, in a strike on their home, the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry said.
The Israeli military said it struck several targets on the first day of the Eid al-Adha holiday, with a jet hitting a rocket launch site and troops killing a “terrorist cell” in close quarters fighting.
An AFP photographer witnessed the aftermath of the the bombing of the home in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. Family members clutched the bodies of dead children at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in nearby Deir el-Balah.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli army.
Israel said 468 aid trucks — a record since the war began — were allowed into Gaza on the eve of the holiday which marks the end of the Muslim fasting month and is traditionally celebrated with family gatherings.
But with the United Nations warning the besieged territory is on the verge of famine, there was little to feast on for the 2.4 million residents of Gaza, up to 1.5 million of whom are crammed into camps around the far-southern city of Rafah.
The faithful gathered at dawn outside the city’s flattened Al-Farooq Mosque, where worshipper Khairi Abu Singer complained that Israel’s relentless bombardment had even “deprived Palestinians from praying inside their mosques”.
Father-of-four Ahmed Qishta, 33, told AFP there was little to celebrate at what should be a joyous time.
“We prepared sweets and biscuits from the aid we got from the UN and now we are giving it to the children. We try to be happy but it is difficult.”
He said they went to pray at the graves of family members killed in the war before going to the Ibn Taymiyyah mosque for Eid prayers.
There has never been “such an Eid — all sadness, fear, destruction and a grinding war,” he said.
Abir Sakik, 40, who fled her home in Gaza City with her family and is now living in a tent in Rafah, said she had no “ingredients for the cakes and sweets” she would usually make.
Instead she made cakes from crushed dates. “We want to rejoice despite all the blood, death and shelling,” she told AFP.