Dozens of Palestinians killed and injured as Israeli army announces new evacuation orders to northern Gaza.
At least 26 Palestinians were killed and many others injured after Israeli forces attacked a mosque and a school housing displaced people in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, the strip’s health ministry said. from Gaza.
“The number of martyrs brought to hospitals due to the occupation’s targeting of displaced people in the Ibn Rushd school and al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Mosque has reached 26, with several others injured,” the ministry said on Sunday. ministry in a press release.
“The Israeli occupation committed three massacres against families in the Gaza Strip, leaving 45 martyrs and 256 injured in hospitals in the last 24 hours,” the text adds.
The ministry said the total death toll since the start of the war on Gaza a year ago reached 41,870, with 97,166 Palestinians injured.
In a statement, the Israeli military claimed, without providing evidence, that the mosque and school were used by the Palestinian group Hamas as “command and control” centers.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s Hani Mahmoud, covering the Shuhada al-Aqsa mosque in Deir el-Balah, said the building was “severely” damaged.
“We passed the mosque this (Sunday) morning and saw the extent of the destruction caused there as well as properties in the surrounding area, including many large stores on the main road,” he said. declared.
Mahmoud said it took paramedics and civil defense teams almost three hours to evacuate the bodies “due to the scale of the damage caused”.
No more evacuation orders
Meanwhile, the Israeli military issued new evacuation orders for large areas of northern Gaza on Sunday morning, ordering residents to flee to the already overcrowded “humanitarian zone” of al-Mawasi.
The army’s Arab spokesman, Avichay Adraee, told residents of northern Gaza that Hamas had established “a terrorist infrastructure in your region, exploiting the population, shelters and health facilities as human shields.”
The orders came shortly after Israel issued a similar warning to thousands of displaced Palestinians sheltering in central Gaza on Saturday, saying its army was preparing to use “great force” against Hamas in the area.
Palestinian and United Nations officials say no place in the enclave is safe, including humanitarian areas where Israeli missiles have repeatedly struck.
“The war is back,” Raed, 52, from Jabalia, told the Reuters news agency before leaving with his family for Gaza City.
“Dozens of explosions from airstrikes and tank shelling shook the ground and buildings, it was like the first days of the war,” he told Reuters via a chat app.
Almost all of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced at least once since Israel began its war on Gaza on October 8. Hundreds of thousands of people have been repeatedly displaced.
The Israeli army also announced that it had surrounded the Jabalia refugee camp, north of Gaza.
“Troops from the 401st and 460th Brigade have successfully surrounded the area and are currently continuing to operate in the area,” the army said in a statement.
Gaza civil defense spokesman Mahmud Basal said multiple attacks rocked Jabalia throughout the night, killing at least 11 people, adding that more people were trapped under the rubble.
Israeli forces have regularly bombarded Jabalia since the start of the war on Gaza, displacing almost all of its residents.