The Israeli army launched deadly attacks across the Gaza Strip, including in the Deir el-Balah, Maghazi and Nuseirat refugee camps, in Gaza City and in the Jabalia refugee camp, where MSF said that thousands of people were trapped.
Israeli attacks killed at least 41 people across Gaza on Friday, Palestinian doctors said, nearly half of them in Jabalia, northern Gaza, where Israeli forces are continuing a brutal ground offensive.
Six people were killed Friday evening in a strike on a residential house belonging to the al-Dayah family, southwest of Gaza City, civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal said.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said the continuing attacks have “all led to one conclusion: mass killings are taking place for the sake of killing, with no objective clear “.
“When we look at the deaths arriving at Deir el-Balah hospital, it is the same pattern, with women and children making up the majority of them,” Mahmoud said.
“If they’re lucky, they get here in one piece. »
The international charity Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, said Friday that thousands of people were stuck in the Jabalia refugee camp amid the Israeli assault.
“No one is allowed in or out; anyone who tries gets shot,” Sarah Vuylsteke, MSF project coordinator, told X.
Five MSF staff members were stuck in Jabalia, she said.
“I don’t know what to do; at any moment we could die. People are starving. I’m afraid to stay, and I’m also afraid to leave,” she said, quoting Haydar, an MSF driver.
At least 15 of the deaths in Jabalia since dawn were due to Israeli strikes targeting various areas, including a school housing displaced people, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said, citing medical sources.
Gaza Civil Defense said dozens of people were injured by Israeli quadcopter fire at the same school. Civil protection teams were able to transport 15 people to Kamal Adwan Hospital as efforts to evacuate the injured continue, Basal said.
“Catastrophic” situation
Besides Jabalia, the Israeli army also sent troops to the neighboring towns of Beit Hanoon and Beit Lahiya.
Palestinian health officials said at least 130 people were killed in the new attack in northern Gaza, while the army ordered residents to evacuate areas where the UN estimates more than 400,000 people are stuck.
Northern Gaza has already seen multiple ground and air attacks that have left the region’s main hospital, Kamal Adwan Hospital, barely functional. It has already been besieged, attacked and bombed.
Earlier this week, Israeli forces ordered the evacuation of the hospital, along with two other medical facilities in the north.
In a statement released Friday, the Gaza government’s media office warned that the situation at Kamal Adwan is “catastrophic,” saying the coming hours will be crucial for the lives of many children currently in the intensive care unit.
Overcrowding and lack of much-needed fuel added to the many challenges, the statement said. Israel continued to seal vital border crossings and prevented fuel from reaching the north.
The office called on the international community to intervene “to save what can be saved”.
The United States, for its part, said it was “genuinely concerned” that Israel was preventing humanitarian aid from entering northern Gaza.
The United States has spent at least $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel since the Gaza war began last October, according to a report from Brown University’s Costs of War Project released Monday.
United Nations officials also expressed concern that the ongoing Israeli offensive and evacuation orders in northern Gaza could disrupt the second phase of the polio vaccination campaign scheduled to begin next week .