DEIR ALBALA, Gaza Strip (AP) – Israeli airstrikes in northern Gaza have killed at least 20 people, mostly women and children, as Palestinians flee Israeli attacks, Palestinian officials said Tuesday. Announced. Some said their aid had been cut off for weeks and they were barely eating. the most isolated and severely destroyed part of the territory.
Israel has been carrying out attacks in the far north of the Gaza Strip for weeks, saying it is targeting Hamas militants who have reunited in the area.
The United Nations said Israel has not allowed food or other supplies into northern Gaza City since the offensive began, even though tens of thousands of people remain on the ground. it is Received a rebuke from the Biden administrationhas warned that if more aid is not granted, U.S. law could force it to curb military aid to Israel.
The strike late Monday hit a house where several displaced families had taken shelter in the town of Beit Rahiya, near the border with Israel, Director-General Hossam Abu Safiya said. It was recently attacked and is barely functioning. Kamal Adwan Hospital received the casualties.
The Israeli military said it had targeted a weapons storage facility where the militants were operating and “a number of measures were taken to reduce the risk of harm to civilians.”
The dead included eight women and six children, according to a list provided by the Gaza Ministry of Health’s emergency services. Separate strikes elsewhere in Gaza Ten more people died early Tuesday, health officials said.
Dozens of Palestinians, most of them women and children, trickled out of Beit Rahiya on Tuesday, dragging backpacks and bags filled with belongings. They entered Gaza City through streets where every building was completely destroyed or badly damaged.
“We came barefoot. We have no sandals, no clothes, nothing. We have no money. We have no food or drink,” Huda Abu Laila said.
“We are hungry. Hunger has killed us. We have been besieged for a month without water or food,” the emaciated elderly women said, crying. I continued.
Umm Nidal Abu Laila, another woman who fled Beit Rahiya, said bodies of Palestinians killed in the attack lay on the streets. “No one can take them back,” she said.
Gaza’s Civil Defense Agency said it had received reports of people trapped alive under the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli forces in Beit Lahiya, but was unable to send rescue teams. The military said it has been hampering troop operations in the area for the past two weeks. The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza said there are currently no ambulances operating in the northern part of Gaza City.
Two elderly patients, one of them battling cancer, died as they tried to leave Beit Rahiya while waiting to pass through an Israeli military checkpoint, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.
The military ordered the complete evacuation of Beit Rahiya, the nearby town of Beit Hanoun, and the urban Jabaliya refugee camp. Still, the United Nations estimated last week that about 100,000 people remain there, even though tens of thousands have been evacuated in the last month. The latest wave of evacuations within the besieged territory. About 90% of the country’s 2.3 million people have been evacuated multiple times during the 13-month war.
Troops have returned to multiple areas of the Gaza Strip multiple times after previous operations, as Hamas continues to carry out hit-and-run attacks on troops and occasionally fires rockets at Israel.
The three hospitals serving the area are largely inaccessible due to the fighting, and ambulance services have been suspended. Israeli forces last month attacked Kamal Adwan Hospital, claiming it was sheltering Hamas militants, a claim denied by Palestinian health authorities.
The attack has raised concerns among Palestinians that it may be carried out by Israel. Plan to surrender or starve In northern Gaza, former generals have proposed that civilians be ordered to leave, aid cut off and those who remain considered combatants.
The Israeli military denies receiving such orders, but the government has not said whether it will adopt any part or all of the plan.
Two children and their parents were killed when an Israeli airstrike hit a house in Gaza City’s Tufa district early Tuesday, the Health Ministry’s emergency services said. Two other children were reportedly injured.
In the central city of Zuwaydah, an airstrike hit a tent where a displaced family was sheltering, killing four people, including a mother and her two children, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the nearby city of Deir Al-Balah. did. Another airstrike hit a house in Deir al-Balah, killing two people, the hospital said. An Associated Press reporter counted the number of bodies in the hospital morgue.
The Israeli military says it targets only insurgents and accuses them of hiding among civilians. There is little comment on individual strikes, which often claim the lives of women and children.
The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking another 250 hostages. There are still about 100 prisoners in the Gaza Strip, and it is believed that about one-third of them have died.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli retaliatory attacks. The ministry did not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but said more than half of the dead were women and children.
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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Natalie Meltzer in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed.
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