Palestinians transport bags of flour on a horse-drawn cart in the besieged Gaza Strip on November 5, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. , Photo courtesy: AFP
One Israeli air strike in northern Gaza Palestinian officials said on Tuesday (November 5, 2024) that at least 20 people, mostly women and children, had been killed as Israel launched a nearly month-long air and ground campaign in the area that was already This was the most isolated and heavily destroyed part of the region.
The strike late on Monday (November 4, 2024) targeted a home where several displaced families live in Beit Lahiya, near the border with Israel, according to Hossam Abu Safia, director of the recently raided and barely functioning Kamal Adwan hospital. Had taken shelter in the city. , causing casualties.
The Israeli military said it targeted a weapons storage facility from which a terrorist had operated, and “several steps were taken to minimize the risk of harming civilians.”
The dead included eight women and six children, according to a list provided by the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service. Another 10 people were killed in separate attacks elsewhere in Gaza early Tuesday (November 5, 2024), according to health officials.
Israel launched the offensive in the north after saying that Hamas militants had regrouped there. The army has returned to several Gaza neighborhoods following previous operations, as Hamas continues to carry out hit-and-run attacks on troops and occasionally fire rockets into Israel.
The army has ordered the complete evacuation of Beit Lahiya, the nearby town of Beit Hanoun and the urban Jabaliya refugee camp, and has allowed almost no humanitarian aid into the area for more than a month. This has drawn a rebuke from the Biden administration, which has warned that US laws could force it to curb military aid to Israel if more aid is not allowed.
Thousands of people have fled to nearby Gaza City in the latest wave of displacement within the besieged territory. About 90% of the population of 2.3 million has fled, often multiple times, during the war.
The fighting has left three hospitals serving the area largely inaccessible, and ambulances have stopped working. Israeli troops raided Kamal Adwan hospital last month, saying Hamas militants were sheltering there, allegations denied by Palestinian health officials.
The attack has raised fears among Palestinians that Israel is implementing a surrender-or-starve plan for northern Gaza proposed by former generals, in which civilians would be ordered out, aid would be cut off and aid would be cut off. Anyone who survives will be considered a fighter.
The Israeli military has denied receiving such orders, but the government has not said whether it is adopting part or all of the plan.
Palestinian officials said 10 people, including four children and two women, were killed in a separate wave of Israeli attacks early Tuesday.
The attack hit a house in the Tufa neighborhood of Gaza City, killing two children and their parents, according to the Health Ministry’s emergency service. It said two other children were injured.
In the central town of Zuwayda, an Israeli airstrike hit a tent where a displaced family was sheltering, including a mother and her two children, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the nearby city of Deir al-Balah. Four people, including children, died. Another attack hit a house in Deir al-Balah, killing two people, the hospital said. An Associated Press journalist counted bodies in the hospital morgue.
The Israeli military says it only targets terrorists and accuses them of hiding among civilians. It rarely comments on individual attacks, which often kill women and children.
The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking another 250 hostage. About 100 detainees are still inside Gaza, about a third of whom are believed dead.
More than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli counterattacks, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its toll, but says more than half of those killed were women and children. .
published – November 05, 2024 06:35 PM IST