15 KILLED, TOTAL GAZA DEATH TOLL HITS 151
Gaza City, 15 Ramadhan 1435/13 Juli 2014 (MINA) -The total number of Palestinians killed by Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip since Monday night has risen to 151, a Palestinian Health Ministry official said Saturday.
“At least 151 people have been killed and around 1050 injured since the start of the Israeli military operation,” Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qodra told Anadolu Agency as quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA).
Fifteen Palestinians were killed and 11 others injured late on Saturday in an Israeli strike on a housing block in eastern Gaza.
Israeli planes targeted the building, even without warning its residents, turning it into mere debris, eyewitnesses said.
They added that another adjacent building was also destroyed in the strike.
One more Palestinian was killed and ten others injured on Saturday in an attack on a group of Palestinians in southern Gaza.
A Gaza resident was killed earlier in the day and three others injured in an Israeli strike on a home in southern Gaza.
Five more residents of the blockaded coastal enclave also succumbed to wounded they sustained in an Israeli strike earlier.
Earlier in the day on Saturday, a 69-year-old Palestinian was killed and a young man seriously injured in an Israeli strike on a home in eastern Gaza, the Health Ministry said.
An additional resident of Gaza succumbed to wounds he sustained early on Saturday in an Israeli attack on Palestinians in northern Gaza.
Israel has launched a military offensive – dubbed “Operation Protective Edge” – with the stated aim of ending rocket fire from Gaza.
It has continued to pound the territory with airstrikes, while ground troops remain massed on the Gaza Strip’s borders in advance of a possible ground assault.
Gaza-based resistance factions, meanwhile, have continued to fire rockets into Israel in response to the unrelenting airstrikes.
They have fired more than 600 rockets since Monday, according to security sources. (T/P09/P04)
Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)
