Israeli forces kill 12 Gazans, including six in a clinic

Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli forces killed at least 12 people on Monday, including six in a clinic housing Palestinians displaced after 21 months of war.

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Israel has recently expanded its military operations in the Gaza Strip, where the war has created dire humanitarian conditions for the Palestinian territory's population of more than two million.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that six people were killed and 15 injured in an Israeli air strike that hit the Al-Rimal clinic, “which houses hundreds of displaced people, in the Al-Rimal neighborhood west of Gaza City.”

AFP footage showed Palestinians, including groups of young children, combing through the bombed-out interior of the clinic, where mattresses lay alongside wood, metal and concrete broken apart in the blast.

"We were surprised by missiles and explosions inside the building," eyewitness Salman Qudum told AFP.

"We did not know where to go because of the dust and destruction."

In the south of the territory, Bassal said two people were killed and 20 others injured by Israeli forces’ gunfire while waiting for aid near a distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).