GAZA CITY: Gaza's civil defence agency and a hospital said on Saturday that an overnight Israeli air strike on an apartment in Gaza City killed five Palestinians, including four women. Israeli media reported that the military was targeting Ali al Amoudi, a senior Hamas official. Gaza City's Al Shifa Hospital said that it had "received at dawn five martyrs and a number of injured... following the Israeli air strike on an apartment" in the Rimal neighbourhood. It said the dead were two women and their daughters, as well as a young man.
Mahmoud Bassal, the spokesperson for the civil defence which operates as a rescue force under Hamas authority, said that his team took "five bodies and several wounded" to the hospital after the strike. He said two missiles directly hit the apartment, causing a fire and damaging the building.
The director of Al Shifa later said that two of the five victims were Christians and that their funerals were held in the small Greek Orthodox church of Saint Porphyrius in Gaza City. Around 1,000 Christians live in the Palestinian territory, most of whom are Orthodox. — AFP
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