Dubai: A Palestinian health official said at least 10 people, including seven children, were killed and 46 wounded in an Israeli strike on a park in the Gaza Strip.
Ayman Sahabani, the head of the emergency room at a nearby Al Shifa hospital, which also was hit, gave the casualty toll in Monday’s strike.
It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties in the strike on the Al Shifa hospital.
The Israeli military has denied its forces were responsible for the attack on hospital and park. It says rockets misfired by Palestinian fighters were to blame.
Earlier Palestinian officials said seven people, at least five of them minors, were killed in Israeli strikes, bringing the Gaza death toll from the three-week-old conflict to more than 1,050, mostly civilians.
As the attacks were resumed after a brief period of lull, foreign pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mounted, with both US President Barack Obama and the UN Security Council urging an immediate ceasefire that would allow relief to reach Gaza’s 1.8 million Palestinians, followed by negotiations on a more durable cessation of hostilities.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reinforced the Security Council’s call for “an immediate and unconditional humanitarian ceasefire” in the Gaza war on Monday and demanded that Israel and Hamas end the violence “in the name of humanity.”
The UN chief accused Israeli Netanyahu and Hamas leader Khalid Mesha’al of being irresponsible and “morally wrong” for letting their people get killed in the conflict. He urged them to demonstrate “political will” and “compassionate leadership” to end the suffering of war-weary citizens.
“Gaza is in critical condition” after pummeling by Israeli forces that has killed helpless civilians and raised “serious questions about proportionality,” he told reporters.
