Israel and Hamas, day 43 | Israeli strikes on refugee camp kill more than 80

The Hamas Health Ministry announced on Saturday the deaths of more than 80 people in two Israeli army strikes on a UN-run refugee camp in Jabaliya, in the fighting-devastated northern Gaza Strip. between Israel and the Islamist movement.

At 43^e day of the conflict, hundreds of people also evacuated the largest hospital in Gaza, also in the north of the Palestinian territory, where there were many patients, doctors and displaced people trapped for weeks by the fighting.

The first strike in the Jabaliya camp hit the al-Fakhoura school which shelters displaced people at dawn, killing at least 50 people, a Hamas health ministry official told AFP. Images posted on social networks, which were not immediately authenticated by AFP, show bodies, some covered in blood, others in dust, on the floors of the building where mattresses had been installed under school tables.

The second strike, which hit a house in the Jabaliya camp, killed 32 members of the same family, including 19 children, the ministry said, releasing the list of names of the Abou Habal family.

Contacted by AFP, neither the Israeli army nor the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) immediately commented on the Health Ministry’s allegations.

In early November, the Hamas government announced that more than 200 people had died in three days in Israeli bombings on Jabaliya, the territory’s largest refugee camp.

During the night from Friday to Saturday, another bombing hit Khan Younes, killing at least 26 people according to the director of the Nasser hospital in this town in the south of the Gaza Strip.

Retaliatory strikes on Gaza have been incessant since Hamas carried out an attack of unprecedented scale and violence on Israeli soil on October 7 which left 1,200 dead, mostly civilians, and kidnapped along with others. armed groups around 240 people, according to Israeli authorities.

According to the Hamas Ministry of Health, Israeli strikes killed at least 12,000 Palestinian civilians, including 5,000 children.

Hospital evacuated

In the morning, hundreds of patients accompanied by medical personnel and displaced people who had taken refuge in the immense al-Chifa hospital complex, located in the west of Gaza City, left on foot, indicated an AFP journalist on site.

The hospital had no electricity, water or food for several days, but officials refused to evacuate without security guarantees.

They headed towards the Salaheddine road, which leads to the south of Gaza where the Israeli army is ordering the population to take refuge.

On the way, the AFP journalist saw at least fifteen bodies, some in an advanced state of decomposition. All around, the roads are broken, stores destroyed, cars overturned or crushed.

Six doctors will, however, remain at the hospital to take care of 120 patients and premature babies who cannot be transferred, said one of them, Dr.^r Ahmed el-Mokhallalati, on X.

According to the Israeli army, which launched a raid on al-Chifa hospital on Wednesday morning, it houses a Hamas hideout installed in particular in a network of tunnels, which the Palestinian Islamist movement denies.

“Unjustifiable”

Israel, which has sworn to “annihilate” Hamas, has been carrying out land operations in parallel with bombing since October 27. They are concentrated so far in the north of the territory, in the city of Gaza transformed into a field of ruins and around the hospitals. The army accuses Hamas of using them as bases and of using the sick as “human shields”.

The territory has been placed under “complete siege” since October 9 by Israel, which has cut off deliveries of food, water, electricity and medicine passing through the Rafah crossing, on the border with Egypt. in southern Gaza. According to Hamas, 24 of Gaza’s 35 hospitals have stopped functioning.

Faced with shortages, the population faces “an immediate risk of famine”, warned the United Nations World Food Program (WFP).

In New York, the head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, criticized “the increasingly unjustifiable scale of Israel’s response”.

According to the UN, more than two-thirds of the Gaza Strip’s 2.4 million residents have been displaced by the war. Most fled to the South, taking with them the minimum and surviving in the cold that sets in.

At the request of the United States, Israel authorized the daily entry of two tanker trucks into the territory on Friday. A cargo of 17,000 liters arrived at the Rafah terminal to supply the electricity generators of hospitals and telecommunications networks, according to the Palestinian part of the terminal.

Israel has so far refused to pass the gasoline, saying it could benefit the military activities of Hamas, which seized power in Gaza in 2007 and is classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel. .

“50% of daily needs”

But these deliveries represent only a small part of the quantities, 50 trucks, which entered Gaza daily before the start of the war, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

“The Israelis have only authorized 50% of the daily fuel requirements for basic humanitarian aid,” the head of the UN agency, Thomas White, commented on X. “People will only have two thirds of their daily drinking water needs.”

According to Unrwa, 70% of the population does not have access to drinking water in the south of the territory, where sewers have started to flow into the streets, treatment plants having stopped working for lack of fuel. .

While negotiations on the release of the hostages are being held via Qatari mediation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses any ceasefire until they have all been released.

A senior adviser to US President Joe Biden for the Middle East, Brett McGurk, agreed with Israel, of which Washington is an unconditional ally: “the release of a large number of hostages would lead to […] a significant pause in the fighting and a massive influx of humanitarian aid,” he said at a conference in Bahrain.

In Israel, a procession of 25,000 people demanding their release, according to its organizers, arrived in Jerusalem on Saturday afternoon, after five days of marching, to gather in front of Mr. Netanyahu’s offices.

The bodies of two female hostages were found this week in buildings near al-Chifa hospital. The army also lost 51 soldiers, killed in combat in Gaza.

Tensions are also high in the West Bank where 12 Palestinians, including ten identified as members of armed groups, were killed in an airstrike and by Israeli fire, according to Palestinian and Israeli sources.

In the territory occupied since 1967 by Israel, around 200 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers and soldiers since October 7, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.