At least eight people – most of them women and children – were killed after the Israeli army shelled last night the church of St Porphyrius, located in the Zaytun neighbourhood and the oldest active church in Gaza City. The church, which belongs to the Orthodox Christian rite, housed hundreds of refugees who had fled precisely because of Israel’s attacks on the Strip, which have so far killed nearly 3 500 Palestinian civilians. The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem issued a strong statement condemning the attack, stressing that it “constitutes a war crime that cannot be forgotten”.
There was no immediate response from the Israeli army to the attack, which resulted in damage to the façade of the 1,500-year-old church and the collapse of an adjacent building belonging to the church, in which dozens of Palestinian families, both Christian and Muslim, were sheltering. The site of the attack is only 250 metres from Gaza’s Baptist hospital, which a few days ago suffered another attack that killed nearly 500 Palestinian civilians sheltering in its facilities – a massacre for which the Israeli army blamed a rocket fired by Islamic Jihad that went off course.
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Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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