Israel has hit a refugee camp in an airstrike killing at least 10 Palestinians, including eight children. Al Jazeera reports that bodies were still being pulled out from under the rubble on Saturday morning. Israel has been bombarding the Gaza Strip for six consecutive days now.

According to al Jazeera, Tamara Alrifai, director of strategic communications and spokeswoman at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the agency was “extremely shocked and devastated” at the news of the bombardment of the Shati refugee camp. She added, “What’s happening in Gaza cannot be disassociated with what’s happening in the West Bank, the protests and the indiscriminate use of force by the Israeli security forces that were the trigger for the events in Gaza and for what is now a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza”.

Al Jazeera reports that at least 139 Palestinians, including 39 children, in the Gaza Strip have been killed since Monday. Another 950 others have been wounded.

Hamas has responded with rocket fire towards the towns of Askhelon and Ashdod in southern Israeli. No casualties have been reported.

Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, at least 13 Palestinians protesting against the Israeli occupation and the ongoing bombardment of Gaza were killed by Israeli forces. Israeli police also continued to crackdown on  Palestinian demonstrators in occupied East Jerusalem last night.

Thousands of Palestinian families have fled to shelter in United Nations-run schools in northern Gaza in the face of Israeli artillery fire.

Saturday marks 73 years since the Nakba, or “Catastrophe”, which was the ethnic cleansing by Zionist militias to create the state of Israel.

Israel has denied that its forces were targeting civilians. It claims that Hamas fighters have been hiding among civilians. Alrifai, however, dismissed Israel’s allegation that Hamas members have been sheltering in refugee camps, saying, “This is total disinformation, that Hamas [is] hiding in UN camps and that being the reason for striking either extremely densely populated refugee camps or causing excessive damage to the UNRWA headquarters, like what happened two days ago.” She said that in the early hours of Saturday there was an air strike on Mahabharat street, in the west of Gaza, while houses were also hit in Rafah and in Jabalia.

The Israeli Defense Force said hundreds of rockets have been fired from Gaza towards Israel. Eight Israelis were reportedly killed.

Umm Muhammed Umar