Even as bodies pile up, Israel says didn’t target hospitals

Israel has denied deliberately targeting hospitals or civilians in Gaza as a three-day truce ended in more bloodshed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government said it is targeting ‘terror sites across the Gaza Strip’ in response to Hamas rocket attacks.

A 10-year-old Palestinian boy was killed and five other boys injured in an airstrike near a mosque in Gaza City, according to doctors. At least 30 rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel since the truce ended at 6 am UK time, Israeli army officials say.

A rocket that hit the Sdot Negev regional council injured a civilian and a soldier, the Israeli military tweeted. Earlier, Amnesty International claimed it has evidence that Israel’s militaary forces have specifically targeted hospitals, health workers and ambulance personnel during the conflict.

However, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev told Sky News: ‘We don’t target hospitals, we don’t target civilians.’ He added: ‘What we’ve had to do on a number of occasions is to hit terrorist targets in the immediate vicinity of hospitals and things like that, where they’ve abused them. And what you’ve seen is there’s a whole series of reports coming out of Gaza from journalists across the planet - not Israeli journalists, Canadians, Finns, Indian journalists and others - who have all reported that Hamas has got this systematic pattern of behaviour where they deliberately abuse humanitarian structures to shoot their rockets.’