ISRAEL’s attacks on Gaza have killed at least 61 people since dawn, targeting civilians in crowded places as its more than two-month blockade of the besieged and bombarded enclave has caused acute food shortages, accelerating the starvation of the Palestinian population.
A reconnaissance drone strike targeted an area near the Thai and Palmyra restaurants on al-Wehda Street in Gaza City on Wednesday. Two missiles were fired at two locations at the same time, 100 metres (110 yards) apart, one inside a restaurant and another at an intersection, killing at least 17 people.
Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said the attack hit one of the few places where Palestinians are able to get a meal.
“The tables and chairs are all thrown around, and blood stains the ground as a result of severe bleeding,” Mahmoud said, reporting from a crowd of residents and street vendors examining the destruction after the attack.
At the site of the attack on the nearby intersection, Mahmoud said people were on the ground “soaked in blood and shredded into pieces”.
Another attack in Gaza City killed 13 people at al-Karama School in the Tuffah neighbourhood
Other Israeli strikes on Wednesday were scattered across Gaza. Three people were killed and several wounded in a strike on a house in Jabalia in northern Gaza.
Another eight people – including a father, his children and cousins – were killed in the southern city of Khan Younis. Five were killed in a strike on one home.
Another three people, including a child, died when a tent shelter was attacked in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. A husband and wife were also killed when a house was hit in Bani Suheila village in eastern Gaza.
The dead also included four people whose bodies were recovered from under the rubble of an Israeli attack earlier this week on a school sheltering displaced people in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. The Palestinian Civil Defence agency said on Tuesday night that more than 30 people had been killed and dozens wounded there.
Mahmoud said Palestinians were “scrambling for cover” as air strikes and explosions struck residential buildings and evacuation centres across Gaza.
“We have confirmed that a farmer was killed in the eastern part of Khan Younis, in Abasan, as he was trying to harvest what he managed to plant in the past couple of months, making up for the lack of food,” Mahmoud said.
