Woman, child killed in Gaza following Israeli airstrike
Israeli airstrikes in Gaza Strip cause home to collapse, killing woman and child, according to Palestinian Health Ministry
A Palestinian woman and her daughter were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Sunday, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah.
In a statement, the ministry said the woman's husband -- along with her three other children -- had also been injured when their home collapsed after Israeli warplanes struck a nearby site in Gaza.
The Israeli military, for its part, said it had responded to a rocket fired into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip on Saturday night by targeting what it described as two Hamas “weapons factories”.
Since 2007, Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has governed the coastal enclave, which continues to groan under a years-long land and naval blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt.
Since Friday, 11 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces. Most of them were killed when Israeli troops fired into crowds, which, the Israeli authorities claim, had approached the “security fence” that surrounds the blockaded enclave.
Another 12 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since the beginning of the month amid ongoing violence between Palestinians and Israeli security forces.
There have also been 14 alleged Palestinian knife attacks on Israeli Jews since Oct. 3, when two of the latter were killed in Jerusalem.
In most cases, the alleged Palestinian attackers have been shot by Israeli security forces immediately after their purported attacks.
Israeli security forces, meanwhile, have responded to widespread Palestinian protests in the West Bank with teargas, rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition, resulting in some 1,000 injuries among Palestinian demonstrators, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Israeli police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld said Sunday morning that a Palestinian woman had detonated an explosive device near an Israeli army checkpoint in the West Bank, seriously injuring herself and lightly injuring a policeman.
Tension has mounted between Palestinians and Israeli security forces since Sep. 13, when Israel began barring Palestinian men under 50 from entering East Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third holiest site.
Palestinians across the West Bank and East Jerusalem -- and many inside Israel itself -- have protested the restrictions, which they say violate their right to worship.
