Aletho NewsUpdated 2:00 pm: An Israeli air strike in southern Gaza hours before a humanitarian truce was declared killed 20 people, including 11 children, most of them from a single family, medics said.
Separately, the bodies of at least another 85 Palestinians were recovered from rubble across Gaza on Saturday, raising the overall Palestinian death toll in the 19-day Israeli terror campaign to 985, the overwhelming majority of them civilians.
“Ambulance crews have recovered the bodies of 85 martyrs under destroyed houses, including children and women, across the Gaza Strip, bringing the total number of martyrs to 985 as a result of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip,” Emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra wrote on Twitter.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army said two more occupation soldiers had been killed, taking its toll to 37.
The strike in southern Khan Younis hit the home of the Najjar family, killing at least 14 relatives, emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said.
Another two members of the Abu Shahla family were killed, along with four other people, two of whom have yet to be identified.
The dead included 11 children, among them a one-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy, Qudra said.
Of the 85 bodies uncovered, 25 were from the northern areas of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, and were taken to the Kamal Adwan hospital, and another 25 to Gaza City’s Shifa hospital from the eastern areas of al-Shujayeh and Zeitoun, Qudra said.
Thirteen bodies received from the central areas of Bureij, Deir al-Balah and Nusseirat were taken to the Al-Aqsa hospital, and another 13 to the European hospital in southern Gaza from the Khan Yunis and Rafah areas, he added.
The toll is expected to rise as bodies are pulled from the rubble of homes in some of the worst-hit parts of Gaza, in northern Beit Hanoun, eastern al-Shujayeh and Zeitoun, and southern Khan Younis.
Soon after the ceasefire took effect, Palestinians ventured out into the streets of Gaza, with many returning to areas that had been too dangerous to enter for days.
In Beit Hanoun, Khan Younis and al-Shujayeh and Zeitoun, they found scenes of utter destruction, with homes flattened and bodies lying in the streets and under rubble.
In Beit Hanoun even the hospital was badly damaged by shelling, and AFP correspondents came across the charred body of a paramedic as emergency workers combed the debris for more dead.
Trails of blood on the ground were crossed by Israeli tank tracks, and there were holes where it appeared Israeli forces had been searching for Hamas tunnels.
Palestinian television showed footage of similar scenes in al-Shujayeh, which has been subjected to days of relentless Israeli tank fire.
Stiff bodies lay on the floor of a room in one building, one caked in dried blood, all of them covered in dust.
(AFP, Al-Akhbar)
http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2014/07/26/palestinians-pull-85-bodies-from-under-gaza-rubble/
“Separately, the bodies of at least another 85 Palestinians were recovered from rubble across Gaza on Saturday, raising the overall Palestinian death toll in the 19-day Israeli terror campaign to 985, the overwhelming majority of them civilians.”
And that’s only the ones they’ve found so far.