A senior Palestinian diplomat at the United Nations has sounded the alarm over Israel’s ongoing siege of northern Gaza, in which hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in the past week and hundreds of thousands of civilian residents are either trapped , or ordered to flee amid intense bombardments.
As the military siege of the Jabalia refugee camp and surrounding areas entered its 10th day on Sunday, Palestinian authorities said at least 200 people had been killed since Israeli operations began earlier this month.
The Palestinian Wafa news agency reported that at least 17 more people were killed on Sunday morning in central and northern Gaza, including eight members of a family from the Nuseirat refugee camp as well as five people in the area. of al-Ettesalat, west of the Jabalia refugee camp. .
“What is currently happening in northern Gaza is a genocide within a genocide,” Palestinian Ambassador Majed Bamya, deputy permanent observer to the UN, wrote on X.
“Continuation of genocidal acts”
Tel Aviv Tribune’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said around 400,000 Palestinians are stuck in northern Gaza, with the Israeli army not allowing anyone to leave the area despite issuing an evacuation order.
“What is happening now is a continuation of the acts of genocide that began a year ago,” he said, adding that more than 70 bodies are still in the streets, with civil defense agents unable to respond. to recover them due to incessant Israeli attacks.
In Jabalia, desperate residents are speaking out about their dire situation on social media, with one saying: “We will not leave, we will die and we will not leave.”
Nasser, a resident of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, said: “While the world is focused on Lebanon and a possible Israeli strike on Iran, Israel is annihilating Jabalia.
“The occupation is blowing up roads and destroying residential neighborhoods. People can’t find anything to eat. They are stuck inside their homes, fearing bombs will fall on their heads. »
An Israeli military statement said Sunday that 40 targets had been hit in Gaza in the past 24 hours, saying the strikes had destroyed weapons and killed dozens of Hamas fighters.
Among the deaths reported in Sunday’s strikes was one person killed after Israeli warplanes struck a gathering east of Deir el-Balah, Wafa reported. Israeli artillery shelling also killed three Palestinians and injured several others in the Bureij refugee camp, the report added.
Explosions were also heard during the Israeli army’s demolition of dozens of houses in and around Jabalia, including in the al-Safatay and al-Tuwam neighborhoods, according to Wafa.
Osama Hamdan, Hamas representative in Lebanon, told Tel Aviv Tribune that Israel had “prevented the entry of food to the north for 10 days”, calling what is happening in Jabalia a “crime against humanity”.
Intentionally starving civilians by “depriving them of objects essential to their survival, including by deliberately preventing the supply of relief supplies” is a war crime, according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Meanwhile, six Palestinians, mostly children, were injured when the Israeli army bombed a house in the Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City, Wafa said.
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, accused Israel of committing “another massacre,” adding that its troops “agreed to be the willing executors of a genocidal plan.”
“It amazes me to think that WE KNOW what Israel is doing and we can’t stop it. Looking back at where we were 100 years ago, no progress has been made,” she said in an article on X.