LONDON: Israeli forces struck historic Abu Salim Mosque in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza, on Monday, the Palestinian media reported, destroying one of the territory’s oldest places of worship. Several Palestinians were reportedly injured in the attack.
Video shared by news outlets and social media users showed dark smoke rising from the site after the strike. The mosque was widely regarded as one of the oldest and most historically significant religious landmarks in the territory.
“The loss of Deir Al-Balah’s Abu Salim Mosque is a tremendous cultural loss,” Maysa Yousef, an artist from central Gaza, told Arab News. “It’s an important landmark and a very old heritage site.”
She said her family had watched from their bomb-damaged home as plumes of smoke rose from the mosque.
Elsewhere in Gaza, a 4-year-old boy and another Palestinian were killed in separate Israeli airstrikes on a house in the Bureij refugee camp and a road in Khan Younis, Reuters reported, citing information provided by medics.
Earlier on Monday, another Israeli strike killed one person and wounded another at a tent in Deir Al-Balah, medics said. The Israeli military said the attack targeted a Hamas militant.
The strikes came amid a broader escalation in Gaza after kites drifted from the enclave into southern Israel, prompting threats from Israeli officials of stronger military action. Several kites were found over the weekend in an Israeli community near the border with Gaza, Israeli media reported.
“Forceful actions will be taken to put an end to this phenomenon,” the Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, said on Monday.
Israeli media reported that the country’s military was compiling a list of targets, considering strikes against operatives at different levels, and ordering evacuations from areas used to launch the kites.
“Today, almost every part of Gaza was struck,” Yousef said. “In each part, (the Israeli army) struck something: a water desalination plant, a mosque, a tent, a prayer area or a home.”
She said evacuation orders were issued to whole blocks, leaving residents to flee without knowing which buildings would be hit.
In Bureij, Yousef said, people fled after the residents of an entire block was ordered to evacuate, but the members of one family remained behind in a tent and were killed when it was struck. She said displaced people living in tents were exhausted as a result of deprivation and repeatedly having to flee.
“People in tents, especially, are exhausted and despairing,” she said. “They would rather die than be displaced and homeless again. They have been through so much.”
