Deir Al-Balah (Gaza Strip): Israeli airstrikes hit central and southern Gaza overnight into Saturday, killing at least 14 people as the friends and family members of a Turkish-American activist killed by an Israeli solider prepared to honour her in a funeral.
The airstrikes in Gaza City hit one home housing 11 people, including three women and four children, and another strike hit a tent in Khan Younis housing Palestinians displaced by the Israel-Hamas war, Gaza’s Civil Defence said on Saturday.
They followed airstrikes earlier this week that hit a tent camp on Tuesday and a United Nations school housing displaced people on Wednesday.
They hit as a campaign to inoculate children in Gaza against polio drew down and the World Health Organisation said about 560,000 under 10 have recovered from their first dose, seven out of every eight children the campaign aimed to vaccinate.
The second doses are expected to begin later this month as part of an effort for which the WHO said parties had already agreed to.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described the campaign as “a massive success amidst a tragic daily reality of life” in a post on X on Friday.
Meanwhile, the body of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, the Turkish-American activist killed September 6 by an Israeli soldier, was returned to her hometown late Friday accompanied by a police honour guard, the official Turkish news agency reported.
Draped in a Turkish flag, the coffin carrying her remains was carried from a hearse to a hospital in Didim by six officers in ceremonial uniform. Her funeral is due to be held in the coastal town in western Turkiye later Saturday.
The 26-year-old activist from Seattle, who held United States and Turkish citizenship, was killed after a demonstration against Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, according to an Israeli protester who witnessed the shooting.
The Israeli military said on Tuesday that Eygi was likely shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by Israeli forces. Turkiye announced it will conduct its own investigation into her death.
Anadolu Agency reported her body arrived in Didim after an autopsy at the Izmir Forensic Medicine Institute.
As Eygi’s family watched the coffin being unloaded, her mother had to be helped by medics, the agency said.
Her death earned condemnation from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken as the United States, Egypt and Qatar push for a cease-fire and the release of the hostages. Talks have repeatedly bogged down as Israel and Hamas accuse each other of making new and unacceptable demands.
The war began when Hamas-led fighters killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in an October 7 attack on southern Israel. They abducted another 250 people and are still holding around 100 hostages after releasing most of the rest in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel during a weeklong cease-fire in November. Around a third of the remaining hostages are believed to be dead.
It has caused vast destruction and displaced around 90 per cent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, often multiple times, and plunged the territory into a severe humanitarian crisis. Gaza’s Health Ministry says over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its count, but says women and children make up just over half of the dead. Israel says it has killed more than 17,000 militants in the war.
