At least 22 people were killed in air strikes in the northern Gaza Strip, with Israeli forces escalating their campaign on the blockaded Palestinian territories even as fighting intensifies in the new war in Lebanon.
The Israeli military on Saturday renewed its orders to evacuate Palestinians still living in the devastated northern half of the Gaza Strip, although many residents say fighting and Israeli sniper fire make it impossible to leave.
Avichay Adraee, an IDF spokesman, told PEOPLE that the area includes parts of Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood and parts around Jabalia, an urban refugee camp.
In a social media post, Adraee asked people living there to head south to Al-Mawasi, a coastal area in southern Gaza where hundreds of thousands of people have already been displaced. A total of 84% of the territory is currently under evacuation orders, pushing civilians into dwindling “humanitarian zones” that Israel bombs regardless.
The United Nations says an estimated 400,000 people are trapped by recent ground fighting and artillery fire concentrated in Jabalia, now in its second week.
“It’s getting more difficult every day. The fear and conditions are indescribable,” said Badr Al-Zaharna, 25, from Gaza City. “I can’t leave. I want to travel but I can’t. “The Rafah crossing has been closed since May.”
The Ministry of Health in Gaza appealed today, Friday, to allow medical teams to reach the northern half of the Strip to evacuate the wounded and deliver fuel to the struggling hospitals in the north, warning that civilians trapped amid intense bombardment and air strikes are about to run out. Of food and water. The United Nations said that Israeli forces prevented seven World Health Organization missions from reaching northern Gaza this week. Also on Saturday, the World Food Programme, the UN food agency, reported that no food aid had reached northern Gaza since October 1, with a 35% drop in food supplies to families in the rest of Gaza, raising new fears of a worsening situation. . Hunger and famine have been plaguing the Strip for a year.
The last food supplies – canned food, flour, high-energy biscuits and nutritional supplements – have been distributed to shelters and health facilities in the north, and it is unclear how long they will last. Israel consistently denies preventing aid and food supplies to Gaza.
Friday night’s air strikes on Jabalia destroyed an entire building and caused severe damage to several others, according to medics and first responders, who are still extracting missing people from the rubble and ruins created by a 20-metre-deep crater.
The Ministry of Health in the Hamas-run area said that among the dead were six women and at least seven children, and an air strike in another part of Jabalia in the early hours of Saturday killed two parents and injured their child. Hospitals across Gaza reported that they received a total of 49 bodies and 219 wounded during the past 24 hours.
The Israeli army did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the recent raids and killing of civilians in Gaza.
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Israel has nominally controlled the northern half of Gaza since the beginning of the year, dividing the area in two by creating what it calls the Netzarim Corridor, which separates what was once densely populated Gaza City from the rest of the Strip. However, it has since repeatedly re-entered Gaza City and other areas in the northern Strip, where it says Hamas fighters are regrouping.
In Lebanon, the Health Authority said that 60 people were killed and 168 others were injured during the past 24 hours, and the United Nations peacekeeping force operating on the Blue Line separating Israel and Lebanon said that its headquarters in Naqoura was targeted for the second time. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the fire.
Israel escalated its campaign against the Lebanese Hezbollah militia last month, a year after the exchange of fire sparked by the October 7 Hamas attack and the ensuing war in Gaza.
The new war in Lebanon has increased the risk of regional escalation that will attract Iran and the United States. Ceasefire talks to end the fighting in Gaza have faltered since July.
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