Israel blows up apartments in Gaza city sending families fleeing

Over the years, the Zakfer Tower apartment blocks in Gaza City have become a residential area to most of Gaza’s elite. In the 1990’s the first people in Gaza to live in high-rise blocks, moved into Zakfer Towers.

As darkness fell on Gaza on Saturday night, Israeli fighter jets attacked one of the 12-story apartment towers in western Gaza City, completely destroying the tower and bringing the 44 residential apartments crashing down to earth.

The Palestinian Interior Ministry said in a statement on Saturday that targeting residential towers is a “dangerous escalation and continued collective punishment, meant to displace more civilians”.

Israel, however, says that there was an operation room for Palestinian resistance groups in the building. Residents, dispute this claim, saying there is nothing there that belongs to any resistance groups.

The interior ministry says Israel’s allegations are baseless and “bankrupt”.

“Why would Israel warn us to evacuate the tower building before attacking if it knew there were resistance members inside? It doesn’t make sense”, says an injured eyewitness, at Shifa hospital.

Abu Salah, 42, says first an Israeli drone struck the roof, then some minutes later, he saw people rushing downstairs. He gathered his 5 children and wife and ran into the road.

“We got outside with in-house clothes on us, leaving all our money and papers behind”.

Now everything is in the ruins of what used to be “Al Zafer 4” apartment tower.  

Including Abu Salah himself, a former Palestinian Authority (PA) employee, residents in Al Zakfer are among the elite of Gaza. Some are sons of senior former PA employees who, historically, have not been considered with favour by Hamas for their long association with Fatah.

Residents say a ‘knock-on-the-roof’ warning missile was fired and then just minutes later the building was bombed with most residents able to escape just in time.

Gaza’s health ministry stated that 22 people were injured, including 11 children and 5 women, who couldn’t escape quickly enough in the five minutes before two Israeli F16 missiles struck. For many Gazans this unprecedented attack on a residential tower is shocking, and demonstrates yet again that Israel is willing to attack any building in Gaza, regardless of strategic importance to Israel’s “security”.

Thick black smoke billows out of huge gaping holes where Israel’s missiles struck the tower. The damage to local infrastructure is massive, including to neighbouring up-scale high-rise buildings of the Tal Al-Hawwa neighborhood. People ran outside in fear and shock as the building trembled and shook.

“I had thought the explosion was in our building. I ran out of the toilet down the stairs” says a 45 year man living next to Zafer apartment tower.

Meanwhile, wheel-chair bound Hesham Saqallah, 51, a former PA employee, says he had some assistance to evacuate the building. He has lost everything in the house. “My money, clothes, papers, furniture and everything. I feel I am born naked with my four children today.”

Hesham says, Israel lied when talking about an operation room for the resistance. “We are a close community, and we know one another very well. No resistance and no strangers live among us”, he says.

“Even when beggars come seeking charity, we help them while they stand outside the tower” he adds.

Israel’s 6-week offensive has caused around 450,000 inhabitants to become displaced in Gaza, seeking shelter either in hospitals or UN and government run schools. Some 100,000 Gazans are now also homeless, according to the UN.

Saturday marked the highest number of homes destroyed, ever, by an Israeli offensive. 

Euro-Mid Observer for Human Rights states that during these 6 weeks of Israel’s offensive, 15,671 residences have been targeted, of which, 2,276 homes were destroyed completely and 13,395 partially destroyed, in addition to tens of thousands of other homes also affected.

Euro-Mid also noted that on Saturday alone and in the course of the past 24 hours, Israel bombed 439 homes, 99 of which were completely destroyed and 340 were partially damaged.

On Saturday, Israeli fighter jets also hit four NGOs, raising the number of targeted organisations to 26, all of which provide services to over 200,000 inhabitants of Gaza.

As the Saturday morning sun rises on another part of Gaza, Israeli missiles targeted a home, killing family members of the Abu Dahrouj family of Zawyda, in the central Gaza Strip.

Residents say this was not a political or militia area. The home just had family members sleeping inside, who now remain asleep, forever.

"The first rocket didn’t explode, luckily. But, as my aunt and family were about to wake the children and evacuate, they were hit by two more rockets", says Arafat Abu Dahrouj, who lives near his cousin’s home.

“Israeli fighter jets shelled the house without giving us time to escape”, he says.

Wael Abu Dahrouj, a cousin, says there are still bodies under the rubble waiting to be recovered. 

Some of the five bodies of the family were blown to pieces, scattered in different areas and are still missing.

Earlier on Saturday, Hamas deputy head, Mousa Abu Marzouq, announced that Hamas has signed a pledge to join the Rome Statute Charter, in an effort to endorse any Palestinian bid for International Criminal Court (ICC) membership. Such a bid could expose Israel, as well as Hamas, to possible war crimes prosecution.

Israeli fighter jets have bombed Qarara Municipality and its cultural center, south of Deir el Balah. In Rafah, 6 airstrikes hit Rafah Shopping Center, destroying and setting alight 80 shops and also damaging two schools nearby as well as neighboring homes.

Around the pile of ruins of Zafer apartment tower, Saqallah can’t restore the feeling of safety to his four children and wife who are now homeless. He says, when he watched the tower collapsing, he thought of 9/11 attacks in NYC.  He says the two American-made missile Israel used sucked the air, collapsing his building in seconds. When asked what he wants Americans to know, he said: “Your 9/11 is our 24/7 of terrorism practiced by Israel”.