BBC: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At least 18 Palestinians have been killed after an Israeli drone strike targeted a Hamas police unit attempting to assert control over a market in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, a doctor and eyewitnesses told the BBC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eyewitnesses said Israeli drones fired at members of a Hamas police force, dressed in civilian clothing and wearing masks, who were confronting vendors they accused of price gouging and selling goods looted from aid trucks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Hamas-run Ministry of Interior condemned the strike, accusing Israel of committing “a new crime against a police unit tasked with maintaining public order”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The BBC has contacted the Israeli military for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One eyewitness told the BBC clashes broke out on Thursday after police confronted the vendors, with the unit commander shouting: “Either sell at a fair price or we will confiscate the goods.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some of the vendors then “pulled out handguns and one man had a Kalashnikov”, the eyewitness said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Israeli drones then fired two missiles, local residents said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Video footage from the aftermath shows bodies strewn on the ground and panicked shoppers screaming, as ambulances rush to attend to those injured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A doctor at Deir al-Balah’s Al-Aqsa Hospital told the BBC 18 bodies were brought to the morgue there. It was not immediately clear how many of those killed were police officers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BBC: At least 18 Palestinians have been killed after an Israeli drone strike targeted a Hamas police unit attempting to assert control over a market in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, a doctor and eyewitnesses told the BBC. Eyewitnesses said Israeli drones fired at members of a Hamas police force, dressed in civilian clothing and wearing masks, who were confronting vendors they accused of price gouging and selling goods looted from aid trucks. The Hamas-run Ministry of Interior condemned the strike, accusing Israel of committing “a new crime against a police unit tasked with maintaining public order”…. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48069,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48068"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48070,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48068\/revisions\/48070"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}