GAZA, Palestine
At least 22 people have been
killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli air strike on a UN-run school
sheltering displaced families in northern Gaza, local medics and the Hamas-run
Civil Defence agency say.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled Jabalia and other areas of northern Gaza in response to an Israeli ground offensive
The director of a local
hospital said children and women were among the casualties from the attack on
Abu Hussein Primary School for Boys in Jabalia refugee camp.
Video footage showed people
carrying a number of casualties and fetching buckets of water in an attempt to
put out a blaze inside a tent.
The Israeli military said it
had “conducted a precise strike on an operational meeting point for Hamas and
Islamic Jihad terrorists”.
It also named 12 men who it
said were among “dozens” of members of the Palestinian armed groups present in
the compound at the time of the strike.
The military accused them of
being involved in rocket attacks on Israel and of carrying out attacks on
Israeli troops in Gaza in recent days.
Hamas rejected the allegation
that the school was being used for military purposes as “mere lies” and part of
a “systematic policy of the enemy to justify its crime”.
The director of the nearby
Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, told the BBC in a
voice note that about 25 people were killed and 75 injured in the strike, and
that children and women were among the casualties who had been brought there.
"Our hospital is small in
size and we cannot receive all these injured people. Most of the people
presented to us were women or children," he said.
The town of Jabalia and its
refugee camp have seen intense Israeli bombardment and fierce fighting on the
ground since the Israeli military launched a ground offensive 12 days ago to
target what it said were Hamas fighters regrouping there.
More than 50,000 people have
fled their homes in response to the hostilities and Israeli evacuation orders,
but UN officials say there are tens of thousands who are stuck there in
increasingly desperate conditions with water and food running out.
Kamal Adwan hospital, along
with the nearby Indonesian and al-Awda hospitals, are facing dire shortages of
fuel and other supplies, according to the UN.
"We are working under
fear, under the sound of explosions everywhere. We have a big challenge in our
hospital," Dr Abu Safiya said.
"We have a lack of
medicine, a lack of medical supplies, a lack of medical equipment. We don't
have enough staff, especially specialists for our ER."
For the first two weeks of
this month, the UN said no humanitarian supplies entered northern Gaza from
Israel’s crossings.
Aid lorries began to go in
this week after a sternly worded letter was sent by the Biden administration,
warning Israel that if it did not increase aid getting into Gaza within 30 days
it risked losing US military assistance.
Israel said it was not
preventing the entry of humanitarian aid and accused Hamas accused of hijacking
and stealing aid deliveries - something the group has denied.
On Thursday, a UN-backed
assessment warned that “the risk of famine persists across the whole Gaza
Strip”, adding: “Given the recent surge in hostilities, there are growing
concerns that this worst-case scenario may materialize.”
The report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification
(IPC) said about 1.84 million people were experiencing high levels of
acute food insecurity, with 664,000 of them facing “emergency” levels of hunger
and almost 133,000 facing “catastrophic” levels.
The last figure is
three-quarters lower than at the time of the last report in June - a fall the
IPC attributed to a temporary surge in humanitarian assistance and commercial
supplies between May and August.
However, the IPC said it
expected the number of people facing “catastrophic” hunger to nearly triple in
the coming months because there had been a sharp decline in aid deliveries and
food availability since September.
In response to the report, UN
Secretary General António Guterres said on X: “Famine looms. This is
intolerable. Crossing points must open immediately, bureaucratic impediments
must be removed, and law and order restored so UN agencies can deliver lifesaving
humanitarian assistance.”
Israel launched a campaign to
destroy Hamas in response to the group's unprecedented attack on southern
Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251
others were taken hostage.
More than 42,430 people have
been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health
ministry.
No comments:
Post a Comment