Israel air strikes injure eight Gazans

WEST BANK: Israeli fighter jets fired several rockets at a medicine factory at around midnight Wednesday and triggered a huge blaze. The structure suffered serious damage in the blitz.

Firefighters were mobilized to the site in order to put out the fire. Palestinian medical workers carried the wounded to a nearby hospital.

Israeli aircraft also targeted a metal workshop in northern Gaza Strip and a field in the southern part on the same day.

Israel laid an economic siege on the Gaza Strip in June 2007, after Hamas took control of the enclave.

The Israeli-imposed blockade has had a disastrous impact on the humanitarian and economic situation in the Gaza Strip.

Some 1.5 million people are being denied their basic rights, including freedom of movement, and their rights to appropriate living conditions, work, health and education.

Poverty and unemployment rates stand at approximately 80 percent and 60 percent, respectively, in the Gaza Strip.

More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed during the three-week Israeli land, sea and air offensive in the impoverished coastal sliver during the winter of 2008-2009.

The offensive also inflicted $ 1.6 billion damage on the Gazan economy.

A United Nations inquiry led by the former South African judge, Richard Goldstone, detailed what investigators called Israeli actions “amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity,” during Israel’s offensive against the Gaza Strip. Wednesday, Press TV