Palestinian death toll from Gaza fighting rises to 48
Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry reports 17 children and 4 women among the casualties; as many as 16 Gazans might have been killed by misfired Islamic Jihad missiles
The death toll from last weekend’s fighting between Israel and Gaza terrorists has risen to 48, after a man and an 11-year-old girl died from wounds sustained during the violence, the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza said Thursday.
Meanwhile, two wounded Gaza children, ages 8 and 14, were fighting for their lives in a Jerusalem hospital. In all, more than 300 Palestinians were wounded over the weekend when Israel struck Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets across Gaza and the terror group fired more than a thousand rockets at Israel over three days of fighting, the worst cross-border violence since an 11-day war with Hamas last year.
The death of 11-year-old Layan al-Shaer at Mukassed Hospital in an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem on Thursday brought to 17 the number of children killed in the fighting.
Two other Gaza children, 14-year-old Nayef al-Awdat and 8-year-old Mohammed Abu Ktaifa were being treated in the intensive care unit at Mukassed.
Nayef, who is blind, was wounded in an Israeli airstrike while Mohammed was hurt in an explosion that went off near a wedding party and killed an elderly woman, with the circumstances still unclear.
Israel has said as many as 16 people might have been killed by rockets misfired by Palestinian terrorists that landed short inside Gaza.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, 48 people were killed, among them 17 children and four women. Those killed during the latest violence include several terrorists, including two senior Islamic Jihad commanders, one of whom Israel said it targeted in order to foil an imminent attack. Islamic Jihad and other Gaza terror groups have acknowledged 15 of the dead were their members.
It wasn’t immediately clear how the man whose death was announced Thursday was wounded.
The fighting disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands of Israelis. Israel’s sophisticated Iron Dome missile defense system knocked down many of the rockets headed to Israel, and no Israelis were killed or seriously wounded.
A ceasefire took hold Sunday night, bringing an end to the fighting.
Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers have fought four wars and several smaller battles over the last 15 years at a staggering cost to the territory’s 2 million Palestinian residents.
