Jabalia, a poor and crowded district that grew out of a camp for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 Israeli-Arab war, has come under repeated Israeli bombardment that has killed scores of civilians, Palestinian medics say. Israel says the strikes have killed many militants dug into the area.
Via social media in Arabic, Israel’s military on Sunday urged residents of several Jabalia neighbourhoods to evacuate towards south Gaza “to preserve your safety” and to that end said it would pause military action from 10am to 2pm (4pm to 8pm, Singapore time).
After the “pause” period expired, 11 Palestinians in Jabalia were killed by an Israeli air strike on a house, the enclave’s health ministry said.
The south has also been repeatedly bombarded by Israel, rendering Israeli promises of safety absurd, say Palestinians.
Around 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed in Hamas’s shock Oct 7 assault, according to Israeli tallies, the deadliest day in the country’s 75-year history.
ISRAELI AIR STRIKES, HAMAS AMBUSH
In the centre of the narrow coastal enclave, Palestinian medics said 31 people were killed, including two local journalists, in Israeli air strikes targeting a number of houses in the Bureij and Nusseirat refugee camps late on Saturday. Another air strike killed a woman and her child overnight in the main southern city of Khan Younis, they said.
In Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, dozens of Palestinians marched to a funeral for 15 residents killed in an Israeli strike on an apartment block on Saturday.
“Our youth are dying, women and children are dying, where are the Arab presidents?” wailed Heydaya Asfour, a relative of some of the dead.
The Israeli army says Hamas uses residential and other civilian buildings as cover for command centres, weapons caches, rocket launchpads and a vast underground tunnel network. The Islamist movement denies using human shields to wage war.
Hamas’s armed wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, said militants killed six soldiers at close range in the village of Juhr al-Dik, just east of Gaza City, after ambushing them with an anti-personnel missile and closing in with machine guns.
A total of 64 Israeli soldiers have died in the conflict, according to the latest army count.
‘DEATH ZONE’ AT GAZA’S BIGGEST HOSPITAL
A team led by the World Health Organization that visited Al Shifa, Gaza’s biggest hospital, described it as a “death zone”, days after advancing Israeli forces seized the premises to root out an alleged underground Hamas command centre.
The WHO team reported signs of gunfire and shelling and a mass grave at Al Shifa’s entrance, and said it was making plans for the immediate evacuation of 291 remaining patients, including the war-wounded, and 25 staff.
On Sunday, 31 premature babies were evacuated from Al Shifa in a joint operation by the UN and Palestinian Red Crescent and will be taken over the southern Rafah border crossing to Egypt for hospitalisation there, Gaza’s health ministry said.
Eight premature babies previously died at Al Shifa for lack of electricity and medication crucial to care, it said.
Hundreds of other patients, staff and displaced people who were sheltering in Al Shifa left on Saturday, with Palestinian health officials saying they were ejected inhumanely by Israeli troops and the military saying the departures were voluntary.
ISRAEL SAYS 55 METRE FORTIFIED TUNNEL UNDER AL SHIFA
Israel published video on Sunday of what it described as a tunnel dug by Palestinian militants under the Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital, a focus of its search-and-destroy missions against Hamas in a war now in its seventh week.
While acknowledging that it has a network of hundreds of kilometres of secret tunnels, bunkers and access shafts throughout the Palestinian enclave, Hamas has denied that these are located in civilian infrastructure like hospitals.
In an update on operations in Gaza City’s Al Shifa Hospital, the Israeli military said its engineers had uncovered a tunnel 10 metres deep and running 55 metres to a blast-proof door.
“This type of door is used by the Hamas terrorist organisation to block Israeli forces from entering the command centres and the underground assets belonging to Hamas,” said a military statement accompanied by video showing a narrow passage with arched concrete roofing, ending at a grey door.
The statement did not say what was beyond the door. The tunnel had been accessed through a shaft discovered in a shed within the Shifa compound that contained munitions, it said.