Another war crime: Israel bombs church sheltering displaced people

NT Bureau, Agencies

Gaza Strip/Tel Aviv: An Israeli air attack has killed and injured a “large number” of displaced people sheltering at a church compound in Gaza, according to the besieged Palestinian enclave’s interior ministry.

The strike left a “large number of martyrs and injured” at the compound of the Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church in Gaza City, the ministry said on Thursday night.

Gaza’s Hamas-run government media office reported on Friday that 18 Christian Palestinians were among the dead. Israeli occupation forces confessed that a strike on the grounds of the Church in Gaza City on Thursday night was caused by its own aircraft.

"The incident is under review,” the IOF claimed.

Witnesses told the AFP news agency the air raid appeared to have been aimed at a target close to the 12th-century place of worship where many Christian and Muslim Gaza residents had taken refuge as the war raged in the enclave.

The Israeli military told AFP that its fighter jets had hit a command and control centre involved in launching rockets and mortars towards Israel.

“As a result of the IDF [Israeli army] strike, a wall of a church in the area was damaged,” it said, adding “we are aware of reports on casualties. The incident is under review.”

Witnesses said the attack damaged the facade of the church and caused an adjacent building to collapse, adding that many injured people were evacuated to hospital.

Saint Porphyrius, built in about 1150, is the oldest church still in use in Gaza. Located in an historic neighbourhood of Gaza City, the church offered sanctuary to people of various faiths over generations.

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem expressed its “strongest condemnation” of the strike.

“Targeting churches and their institutions, along with the shelters they provide to protect innocent citizens, especially children and women who have lost their homes due to Israeli airstrikes on residential areas over the past 13 days, constitutes a war crime that cannot be ignored,” the patriarchate said in a statement.

Gaza has been hit by a relentless barrage of Israeli fire following an attack by Hamas fighters on October 7, which Israel says killed at least 1,400 people, most of them civilians.

Israel prepares for ground invasion

Israel is bombarding Gaza and evacuating a sizable town near the Lebanese border in the latest sign of a potential ground invasion of Gaza that could trigger regional turmoil.

Israel’s defense minister has ordered troops to prepare to see Gaza “from the inside,” hinting at a ground offensive aimed at crushing Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers.

Aid shipments badly needed in Gaza are positioned to enter through the Rafah border crossing from Egypt.

‘Each hour without ceasefire means more dead children’

Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, has denounced the failure to get 20 trucks of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, saying there is a lack of international will.

“Not even the symbolic 20 trucks have entered Gaza. Needs are equivalent to thousands of truckloads of relief,” Egeland wrote on social media.

Holy places have to be protected: Greek Orthodox Church leader

Archbishop Makarios Mavrogiannakis, head of Greek Orthodox Church in Doha, says the attack on the Saint Porphyrius Church in Gaza City struck at the heart of the Greek Orthodox community in the Palestinian enclave.

“This is the centre of the Orthodox community in Gaza. It is known that the humanitarian and holy places have to be protected, even during the war, as places [of] shelter for innocent people,” Mavrogiannakis told Al Jazeera.