A number of displaced Palestinians, including Father Gabriel Romanelli, were injured on Thursday following an airstrike by Israeli occupation forces targeting the Holy Family Church, affiliated with the Latin Patriarchate, in the al-Zaytoun neighbourhood of eastern Gaza City.
According to eyewitness accounts, the strike directly hit the vicinity of the church, which has been sheltering dozens of displaced Palestinian families, including elderly people, women, and children, who had sought refuge there to escape the relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip, ongoing for over nine months. The priest sustained an injury to his leg and was transferred to Al-Ahli (Baptist) Hospital for treatment.
The attack on one of Gaza’s oldest Christian religious landmarks comes at a time when the city is suffering from a total collapse of humanitarian services amid a campaign of genocide waged by the occupation forces, a campaign that has spared neither people nor places, not even houses of worship.
The Holy Family Church has not merely served as a religious site but has also become a shelter and lifeline for hundreds of Palestinians, both Christians and Muslims alike, during the war. For months, it has functioned as a relatively safe haven amidst the widespread destruction of residential areas, hospitals, and educational institutions.
The bombing of this sanctuary constitutes a double crime, it is both a direct attack on civilians seeking refuge in a place of worship and a violation of the sanctity of religious sites, which are afforded special protection under international humanitarian law during armed conflict. The assault also carries deep symbolic significance due to the church’s importance to the local Christian community and its role as a religious, humanitarian, and cultural institution.
This is not the first time the occupation has bombed a church in Gaza. Previous airstrikes destroyed parts of the Saint Porphyrius Church, the oldest in the Strip and the third-oldest church in the world, resulting in the deaths of civilians who had been sheltering inside. The Baptist Church, which houses service facilities and shelters, was also damaged in earlier strikes.
The targeting of churches cannot be explained away as “accidental,” as the occupation attempts to claim. Rather, it forms part of a systematic campaign aimed at destroying both civil and religious infrastructure, erasing Gaza’s religious and cultural landmarks, and attempting to obliterate the shared identity of Palestinian society, both its Christian and Muslim components.
Since 7 October 2023, the occupation has launched a genocidal war against Gaza, involving systematic killing, deliberate starvation, widespread destruction of infrastructure, and mass forced displacement. Hardly an hour passes without reports of civilian casualties. Meanwhile, famine and disease are ravaging those who have managed to survive.
The number of people killed or injured in Gaza has now exceeded 198,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom are women and children. In addition, over 10,000 people remain missing, many presumed to be buried beneath the rubble. Hundreds of thousands now face death by hunger, thirst, or lack of medical care, amid unprecedented destruction of hospitals, schools, places of worship, and food storage facilities.
