GAZA, August 20 (RIA Novosti) – An Israeli airstrike on Gaza City has claimed the lives of a young girl and a woman, wounding 16 others, local medical workers have reported.
“A 40-year-old woman and a two-year-old girl were killed in an airstrike on a house in the Sheikh Radwan district in the northwest of Gaza City; 16 people were injured,” local emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra told RIA Novosti late Tuesday.
These were the first victims of the bombardments that resumed in the region following a five-day ceasefire.
Israel blamed Palestinian rebels for violating the truce after at least ten rockets landed in the Jewish state. Two of them were intercepted in the air; another one damaged a café in the city of Ashkelon. No injuries were initially reported.
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the army to retaliate with airstrikes on Gaza and instructed the Israeli delegation in Cairo to return to Israel as negotiations with the Palestinians over a potential truce had collapsed.
