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At least 21 people, including seven children, were killed in a fire that tore through a house storing fuel in northern Gaza City on Thursday, official and medical sources said.
Hamas Islamists, who control the Palestinian enclave blocked by Israel, said firefighters had managed to contain the blaze in Jabaliya, leaving charred walls and mounds of black soot before being extinguished.
The Gaza Civil Defense Force confirmed in a statement that 21 people had been killed.
The director of the Indonesian hospital in Jabalia, Saleh Abu Leila, told AFP that the hospital had received the bodies of at least seven children.
While the cause of the fire was still unknown, a spokesman for the Civil Defense told AFP that a fuel supply was stored in the house.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank – an independent Palestinian territory – considered the fire a “national tragedy”, his spokesman said.
Abbas declared a day of mourning on Friday, lowered flags at half-staff, and offered assistance to families of the victims to “relieve them,” spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said in a statement. pain of”.
A senior Palestinian Authority official, Hossein Sheikh, urged Israel to open the Erez crossing linking Gaza to southern Israel, which is usually closed at night.
Al Sheikh said this would allow the transport of seriously injured patients “so that they can be treated outside the Gaza Strip if necessary”.
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz tweeted that his staff would assist in the “humanitarian evacuation of the wounded to (Israel) hospitals,” expressing sympathy for the “grave disaster” in Gaza.
– Fires are common –
Crowds of onlookers gathered on the street outside the multi-storey residences as the fire raged, with smoke billowing from the tops of concrete buildings.
Jabalia was a refugee camp, but like many such Palestinian camps, it now includes large buildings that resemble a city in many ways.
Crowds remained in the street after the fire was extinguished, with hundreds of police and emergency responders on the scene.
Gaza, densely populated with 2.3 million people, has been under an Israeli blockade since 2007, which Israel says is necessary to curb the threat of armed groups in the Gaza Strip.
With scarce electricity in impoverished areas, home fires are common as Gazans look to alternative sources of energy for cooking and lighting, including kerosene lamps.
According to United Nations figures, Gaza has been receiving electricity for an average of 12 hours a day this year, compared with just seven hours five years ago.
New dangers arise in winter when many people burn coal for heat.
Hamas said an investigation was underway to determine the cause.
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