By Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA – Mourners flooded the streets of Gaza on Friday as they carried the shrouded our bodies of 21 folks, together with a minimum of eight youngsters, killed in a hearth in an house block the place residents had deliberate to have fun the homecoming of a relative.
A lot of the useless had been members of the Abu Rayya household, their our bodies wrapped in Palestinian flags and introduced right into a mosque for prayers over their souls, earlier than being buried on the Cemetery of Martyrs east of the Jabalia refugee camp.
The Islamist Hamas group, which has dominated the Gaza Strip since 2007, gave the victims a army funeral.
It took firefighters greater than an hour to get management of the large flames that burst via the highest ground of a four-story residential constructing in Jabalia, certainly one of eight refugee camps within the Gaza Strip, the place 2.3 million folks stay in one of the densely populated areas on earth.
Particulars about how or why the hearth broke stay unclear as there have been no survivors, Abu Ahmad Abu Rayya, the pinnacle of the clan, stated.
“A father, his youngsters and his grandchildren, not certainly one of them obtained out alive to inform us what occurred,” Abu Rayya advised the crowds with a strained voice.
Gaza’s Inside Ministry stated it had launched an investigation into the incident which revealed that giant quantities of gasoline had been saved on the website, presumably fuelling the blaze that shortly engulfed the constructing.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas known as it a nationwide tragedy and declared Friday a day of mourning.
A number of Arab states, the United Nations and the European Union expressed their condolences for the bereaved households.
Palestinian officers stated a virtually 15-year-long blockade on Gaza has crippled the financial system and undermined their effort to improve the aptitude of the enclave’s civil emergency division to battle fires, particularly in excessive rise-buildings.
Citing safety issues with Gaza’s Hamas rulers, each Israel and Egypt keep restrictions alongside their frontiers with the coastal territory.
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