At least eight people were killed in an overnight Israeli airstrike on the Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church in Gaza city, which was sheltering hundreds of Palestinians, local media reported on Friday.
According to the official Wafa news agency, Israeli jet fighters bombed the Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church on Thursday night, killing eight Palestinians and injuring dozens more, the majority of whom were women and children.
Civil defense rescue teams are working to extract the dead and injured from the rubble, the news agency reported.
The Israeli airstrike damaged the church’s facade, and an adjacent building belonging to the church also collapsed, sheltering dozens of Palestinian Muslim and Christian families, it reported.
The Palestine interior ministry on Friday said that several displaced people who had taken shelter at a church compound in the Gaza Strip have been killed and injured in an Israeli strike, AFP reported.
The strike left a “large number of martyrs and injured” at the compound of a Greek Orthodox church, the ministry says.
According to documentation by Euro-Med Monitor, at least 4,079 Palestinians have been killed, including 1,413 children and 806 women. More than 15,000 additional Palestinians have been injured in various ways, with more than half of them being children and women.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor concluded that Israel is committing complex war crimes in the Gaza Strip. The organisation reiterated that these crimes represent serious violations of international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes under the Fourth Geneva Convention for the Protection of Civilians.
The egregious crimes currently being committed by Israel include, comprehensive closure and collective punishment, a war crime under international law, genocide through continuous and relentless aerial bombardment of civilian populations and the destruction of homes over their heads.
Ethnic cleansing and forced transfer began in the Gaza and North Gaza governorates and is expected to continue towards the Egyptian Sinai, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor added.
