Israel confirms it struck Jabalia refugee camp; Gaza health official says dozens killed
Video and still images show people searching for survivors under rubble
THE LATEST:
- Hamas says it will release some foreign captives in coming days.
- Israel says it attacked Hamas militants inside tunnels.
- Palestinian telecommunications company says internet completely cut off in Gaza.
- WHO warns of 'imminent public health catastrophe' in Gaza.
- Lack of humanitarian relief will play into Hamas's hands, Blinken says.
- Israeli PM Netanyahu says Israel won't agree to a ceasefire with Hamas.
- Israel injured Lebanese civilians with white phosphorus: Amnesty International.
Rescuers searched for survivors in the rubble of a building at the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza on Tuesday after Israeli airstrikes on the area.
The director of Gaza's Indonesian Hospital, which is located near Jabalia, told Al Jazeera that more than 50 Palestinians were killed and 150 wounded in the airstrikes.
A Hamas statement said there were 400 dead and injured in Jabalia, which lies on Gaza City's outskirts within the main northern ground zone of combat between dug-in Hamas militants and Israeli troops and tanks. Jabalia houses families of refugees from wars with Israel dating back to 1948.
A spokesperson for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) confirmed on CBC News that Israel hit the camp.
Lt.-Col. Jonathan Conricus said the strike targeted and killed a senior Hamas leader, and he claimed the group had an underground base below the neighbourhood in northern Gaza.
"Two weeks ago, we started warning people to evacuate because we said this is going to be a focal point for significant military operations," Conricus said, referring to Israel's call for citizens in northern Gaza to move south.
The United Nations has said that more than a million people have been displaced in Gaza — a territory that Israel has blockaded since 2005 with the help of Egypt — but many in the north have resisted fleeing in part because Israel has also bombarded targets in the south.
"They have had time to evacuate," Conricus said of civilians in Jabalia.
Conricus again repeated the IDF's long-standing accusation that Hamas, an armed Islamist group that governs Gaza, uses civilian buildings as cover for fighters, commanders and weaponry — an accusation the group denies.
Footage obtained by Reuters showed a swath of destruction, with deep bomb craters and gutted, multi-storey cement dwellings as people dug through mounds of rubble with their hands in search of loved ones, dead or alive.
Medics lay the dead swaddled in white cloth in a long line outside the hospital, located in the adjacent town of Beit Lahiya, as the injured, including wailing children, were rushed inside for treatment amid scenes of pandemonium.
Reuters could not independently verify the reported casualty figures.
Internet cut off again
Palestine Telecommunication Company, or Paltel, said early Wednesday in a post on messaging platform X, formerly known as Twitter, that communications and internet services have been completely cut off in Gaza due to international access being disconnected again.
It's the second time in less than a week there has been a communications blackout in Gaza, with much of the territory cut off from the outside world last Friday, for nearly 36 hours, amid heavy Israeli bombardments as the IDF ramped up its ground offensive.
At that time, Human Rights Watch warned such blackouts "can be used to cover up mass atrocities and contribute to impunity."
Fighting in tunnels
Meanwhile, Israel said on Tuesday that its forces fought Hamas gunmen inside the militants' vast tunnel network beneath Gaza, a prime objective for Israel as it expands a four-day-old ground offensive.
The tunnels are a key objective for Israel as it expands ground operations inside Gaza to wipe out the ruling Hamas movement following its attack three weeks ago that Israeli authorities say killed more than 1,400 people, including several Canadians.
"Over the last day, combined IDF combat forces struck approximately 300 targets, including anti-tank missile and rocket launch posts below shafts, as well as military compounds inside underground tunnels belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization," the the IDF said in a statement.
Militants responded with anti-tank missiles and machine-gun fire, it added.
"The soldiers killed terrorists and directed air forces to real-time strikes on targets and terror infrastructure," the IDF said.
Hamas has so far released four civilians from the 239 hostages Israel says were captured on Oct. 7. Many of the hostages are believed to be held in the Hamas tunnel network.
A spokesperson for the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas's armed wing, said in a video posted to the Telegram messaging service on Tuesday that Hamas told mediators it will release a number of foreign captives in the coming days.
Israeli armed forces also bombed Gaza overnight in air, sea and ground attacks, targeting northwestern areas of the Palestinian enclave where Israeli troops were operating on the ground, witnesses said on Tuesday.
The al-Qassam Brigades said militants clashed early on Tuesday with Israeli forces, "invading the southern Gaza axis, [including] with machine-guns, and targeted four vehicles with al-Yassin 105 missiles," referring to locally produced anti-tank missiles.
The militants also targeted two Israeli tanks and bulldozers in northwest Gaza with the missiles, al-Qassam said.
Reuters was not able to confirm the reports of fighting.
Gaza health authorities say that 8,525 people have been killed this month in Israeli attacks. That figure includes a disputed toll from an explosion at a Gaza hospital two weeks ago. The Gaza Health Ministry says it tallies figures from reports from hospital directors, though it doesn't distinguish between civilian deaths and those of Hamas militants.
Reuters has been unable to independently verify casualty counts.
'Imminent public health catastrophe'
United Nations and other aid officials warned that a public health catastrophe was engulfing civilians in Gaza, with hospitals struggling to cope with mounting casualties and food, medicine, drinking water and fuel running short.
UN officials say more than 1.4 million of Gaza's civilian population of about 2.3 million have been made homeless.
The mounting death toll has drawn calls from the United States, Israel's top ally, other countries and the UN for a pause in fighting to allow more humanitarian aid to reach the enclave.
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking in Washington, D.C., stressed the importance of both security assistance for Israel and humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza.
"Without swift and sustained humanitarian relief, the conflict is much more likely to spread, suffering will grow, and Hamas and its sponsors will benefit by fashioning themselves as the saviours of the very desperation they created," he said.
Israel has sealed off Gaza and refuses to allow in fuel supplies lest, it says, they be used by Hamas to wage war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday said Israel would not agree to a ceasefire and would pursue its plans to annihilate Hamas.
World Health Organization spokesperson Christian Lindmeier warned of the risk of civilian deaths not directly linked to Israeli bombardment.
"It's an imminent public health catastrophe that looms with the mass displacement, the overcrowding, the damage to water and sanitation infrastructure," Lindmeier told reporters.
A spokesperson from the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), James Elder, warned of the risk of infant deaths due to dehydration, with water output at five per cent of normal levels.
"So child deaths due to dehydration, particularly infant deaths due to dehydration, are a growing threat," he said, adding that children were getting sick from drinking salty water.
On Monday, UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said more than 3,400 Palestinian children have been killed and more than 6,300 injured so far.
"This means that more than 420 children are being killed or injured in Gaza each day — a number which should shake each of us to our core," she said.
The UN humanitarian office (OCHA) reported on Monday that water supply through a pipeline from Israel to southern Gaza was cut off on Monday "for unknown reasons" and that an announced repair of another pipeline to central Gaza did not take place.
Aid trucks have been trickling into Gaza from Egypt over the past week via Rafah, the main crossing that does not border Israel. It has become the main point of aid delivery since Israel imposed a "total siege" of Gaza after the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas.
OCHA said 26 trucks entered the Rafah crossing on Monday.
Blinken told Washington lawmakers that the U.S. hoped by the end of the week that a rate of 100 trucks per day — "the bare minimum of what's needed," he said — could enter Gaza.
Israel used white phosphorus: rights groups
The human rights group Amnesty International said Tuesday that civilians in southern Lebanon were injured this month when Israeli forces hit a border village with shells containing white phosphorus, an incendiary munition whose use in war is controversial because of the potential to cause harm to civilians.
The organization said it verified three other instances of Israel's military dropping white phosphorus on Lebanese border areas in the past month, but Amnesty said it did not document any harm to civilians in those cases.
International law does not classify white phosphorus as a chemical or incendiary weapon, and its use in war is not prohibited, but human rights advocates say that when it is used in populated areas it is, in fact, a violation of international humanitarian law.
The white-hot chemical substance can set buildings on fire and burn human flesh down to the bone. Survivors are at risk of infections and organ or respiratory failure, even if their burns are small, rights groups say.
Israel maintains it uses the chemical only as a smokescreen and not to target civilians.
After an Oct. 16 Israeli strike in the town of Duhaira, houses and cars caught fire, and nine civilians were rushed to the hospital with breathing problems from the fumes, Amnesty said. The group said it had verified photos that showed white phosphorus shells lined up next to Israeli artillery near the tense Lebanon-Israel border.
The organization described the incident as an "indiscriminate attack" that harmed civilians and should be "investigated as a war crime."
The Amnesty report is the latest in a series of allegations by human rights groups that Israeli forces have dropped shells containing white phosphorus on densely populated residential areas in Gaza and Lebanon during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have also reported an alleged case of white phosphorus shelling in a populated area of the Gaza Strip during the current Israel-Hamas war but have not verified civilian injuries from it.
With files from CBC News and The Associated Press