ISRAELI OCCUPIED GAZA, 18 Sept. - (ANA) - At least 21 Palestinians were killed and 45 injured after a six-storey residential building damaged in an earlier Israeli strike collapsed in western Gaza city overnight.

 

The Al Saada building had been sheltering nearly 100 people, including 10 displaced families, when it collapsed, Gaza's civil defence agency said in a statement on Wednesday.

 

The agency said it moved 35 people from the building and nearby tents to safe locations where their health was checked.

 

“Our crews are working with the basic tools and digging by hand,” civil defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal told The National. “We have no heavy equipment that can be used in such situations, making the operation extremely difficult.”

 

Mr Basal later told a press conference that the teams had been working at the site for more than 15 hours and had rescued more than 20 people from the rubble.

 

He warned that more than 2,000 damaged residential buildings in Gaza remained occupied and at risk of collapse. Many families are staying in unsafe buildings because tents were unsuitable for living and had become “graves and hell” for displaced people, he said.

 

He called on the international community to provide mobile homes instead of tents, warning that more people would die if conditions did not improve.

 

The agency said it urgently needed two excavators, a digger and bulldozers to continue rescue operations and warned that dozens of structurally damaged buildings could collapse in the winter.

 

It called on the UN Security Council and guarantors of the Gaza ceasefire agreement to facilitate the entry of rescue machinery and equipment to the territory.

 

A US-backed ceasefire in October 2025 halted large-scale fighting in Gaza, but it has not ended Israeli strikes and there has been little progress on steps towards permanent peace.

 

More than 1,300 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed in Gaza since the ceasefire took effect, according to the territory's health officials, while the Israeli military says four Israeli soldiers have been killed.  - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/18 September 2026 - -