A mother and her daughter were killed today by an Israeli soldier in the compound that houses the only Catholic church in Gaza City, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem announced.

“Today, around noon, an Israeli army sniper killed two Christian women in the Holy Family Parish in Gaza, where the majority of Gaza’s Christian families have taken refuge since the start of the war” between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement, it said. the Latin Patriarchate in a statement.

“Nahida and her daughter Samar were killed by gunfire while walking to the Monastery of the Brothers,” the statement added, without specifying the ages of the victims.

Another seven people were wounded by bullets while trying to protect themselves from the fire inside the parish, according to the same source.

The Israeli military, contacted by AFP, did not immediately comment on the information.

“They were shot in cold blood,” the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem charged, despite the fact that “no belligerent is within the walls of the parish.”

The Catholic community in the Palestinian enclave — whose Palestinian residents are overwhelmingly Muslim — numbers 135 out of a thousand Christians, most of whom are Orthodox.

The war between Israel and Hamas broke out on October 7, after the Palestinian Islamist movement’s bloody attack on Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip.

According to Israel, 1,139 people, mostly civilians, were killed in this attack. In retaliation, Israel vowed to “exterminate” Hamas, continuously bombing the Palestinian enclave and launching a major ground operation.

Hamas’ health ministry announced on Friday that 18,800 people have been killed by Israeli shelling, mostly civilians.