Roman Catholic church officials said an Israeli military sniper shot and killed a mother and her daughter on Saturday inside a church compound in northern Gaza, where many Palestinian Christian families have taken refuge.
The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said that “one died while trying to carry the other to safety” on the grounds of the Church of the Holy Family in Gaza City. Seven more people were wounded by gunshots while trying to protect others there, the patriarchate said in a statement on Saturday.
“No warning was given, no notification was provided,” the patriarchate said. “They were shot in cold blood within the parish premises.”
The patriarchate said Israeli rockets were fired at a convent on the church compound earlier on Saturday, destroying the building’s only generator and fuel supply and severely damaging the structure. Fifty-four disabled people lived at the convent and some were left without the respirators they need to survive, according to the statement.
The Israeli army has denied knowledge of an attack on the Holy Family parish.
Pope Francisco condemned the killings Sunday in his weekly speechsaying that he continued to receive “very serious and sad news about Gaza.”
“Unarmed civilians are targets of bombs and gunshots,” the Pope said. “And this has also happened within the parish complex of the Holy Family, where there are no terrorists, but families, children, sick and disabled people, sisters.”
The Pope identified the two murdered as Nahida Khalil Anton and her daughter Samar Kamal Anton. He said they and the others who were shot were heading to the bathroom.
Layla Moran, a member of the British Parliament, said in an interview on Sunday that members of her extended family spanning three generations – a grandmother, her son, his wife and their 11-year-old twins – were among the hundreds of Palestinian Christians who They were looking for refuge. in the parish compound of the Sagrada Familia, which also includes a school and a rectory.
The compound has experienced a “huge escalation” of gunfire since Tuesday, without warning from the Israeli military, Moran said. Church families have remained trapped in classrooms with dwindling supplies of food and water, she said, adding that he feared his relatives there would not survive until Christmas.
The dire humanitarian situation at the church and the killing of the two women on Saturday “make a mockery of the suggestion” that the Israeli military is trying to keep civilians safe, he said.
Moran said a sixth member of his family who was taking shelter at the church, the twins’ 81-year-old grandfather, died after becoming dehydrated and could not be taken to a hospital, because nearly all health care facilities in the north Gaza had stopped working.
The family sought refuge in the church during the first week of the war after their home in Gaza City was bombed, he said.
“Nowhere is safe in Gaza,” he said. “So they made the decision to stay in their church, with the people they knew, with the priests, thinking that they would be safe in the church. Who would attack a church?
In October, an Israeli airstrike hit a Greek Orthodox church in Gaza City. Gaza’s Health Ministry said at least 16 people were killed and many others were buried under rubble. The Israeli military said the church, which like the Holy Family housed displaced families, was “unequivocally” not the intended target of the attack, and that the warplanes were targeting a nearby Hamas command center.
Nick Cumming-Bruce, Rachel Abrams and Jonathan Reiss contributed reporting.
