CAIRO: The Israeli military bombed at least five crowded homes in northern Gaza early on Thursday with many casualties buried beneath the rubble, Palestinian health officials said, as troops deepened an incursion along the territory’s northern edge.

Rescue operations were under way in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, medics said. Hamas media put the number of fatalities at 66, most of whom it said had not been recovered.

Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, one of three medical facilities barely operational in the besieged northern area, said at least 200 people lived in the residential district that was bombed in Beit Lahiya and that many people remained missing. Abu Safiya said medics were recovering injured people and treating them on-site because they had no ambulance vehicles to move them to hospitals.

Even if the injured make it to hospital, many then die because of a lack of medical supplie and specialised surgeons after Israel detained or expelled most of the medical staff, Abu Safiya said.

UNRWA chief says 80pc of enclave is now high-risk

Israeli operations in Gaza have focused for weeks on the northern edge of the territory, where the military has laid siege to three major towns and ordered residents to flee. Residents in the three towns — Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun — said Israeli forces had destroyed hundreds of houses in since they began the latest offensive on Oct 5.

Gaza now ‘high risk’

Palestinians say Israel appears determined to depopulate the area permanently to create a buffer zone along the northern edge of Gaza, which Israel denies. Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), said on Thursday that 80 per cent of the Gaza Strip is now high-risk, with many people increasingly desperate.

“They are trapped with no safe place to go. In northern Gaza, people remain under a tight siege. They run for their lives in vicious circles and have been deprived of humanitarian aid for more than 40 days now,” he said in a post on X. “Across Gaza, the delivery of the little aid allowed in has become overly complex including because of insecure routes,” he added. The administration of US President Joe Biden last month told Israel it had 30 days to improve the flow of aid to Gaza or risk consequences to US military assistance.

On Nov 12, Washington said it had concluded that Israel had made progress and was not impeding aid to Gaza. Many aid groups disagreed.

Adding to the challenges, armed gangs have stepped up looting of aid trucks, contributing to spiralling prices of essential food items such as flour. The price of a 25kg sack of flour, if available, has risen to 700 shekels ($186) from 50 shekels ($13) over the past week.

“Code-word today is hunger everywhere in Gaza. Looters are sharing the occupation’s war against the displaced,” said Tamer, a Gaza City man now living alongside hundreds of thousands of people who have crowded into Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza.

In Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, an Israeli strike killed two people, while another strike killed three others in Rafah, in the south near the border with Egypt.

Published in Dawn, November 22th, 2024