Israeli military carries out another attack on tents in Gaza
Israeli forces have shelled tents sheltering displaced Palestinians in the al-Mawasi area west of Rafah city in southern Gaza, our Al Jazeera Arabic colleagues report. No casualties or injuries have been reported so far. We will bring you more information when we have it.
Earlier, we reported that the Israeli military had attacked tents housing displaced Palestinians in both Khan Younis in southern Gaza and Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, resulting in several casualties.
Gaza’s Beit Lahiya declares state of disaster as Israel steps up attacks
We are seeing tragedy after tragedy unfolding in northern Gaza.
While people were still searching for bodies under the rubble – and there’s so many who have gone missing because it is believed that their bodies were pulverised by the intensity of the attack on the Abu Nasr family home in Beit Lahiya – another attack late at night killed at least 19 people.
These successive attacks have put more pressure on civil defence crews on the ground. They are carrying out rescue work in an unofficial way at these sites because [the Israeli military] has threatened them not to operate in the northern part of the Strip.
People in the north are enduring a military siege, a lack of basic supplies, and ongoing attacks that are destroying virtually all means that support their existence. People do not have any access to any basic necessities, including the medical care that is really needed right now just to treat the large number of wounded and to mitigate some of the suffering. None of the health facilities are operational. They have turned into standing skeletons of concrete, into desolate graveyards. They do not have the capacity to offer medical help.
Not only that, there is also a lack of food, of water and other essential resources.
That is why the municipality in Beit Lahiya has declared that the northern part of the Strip is a disaster area, which means there’s nothing to sustain life there.
People sit next to the body of a relative as they look at the rubble of their building after an Israeli strike in Beit Lahiya
‘Absolutely desperate conditions’ in northern Gaza: UNRWA official
Sam Rose, the senior deputy director of UNRWA affairs in Gaza, has described scenes in northern Gaza as “catastrophic”. “Absolutely desperate conditions. It’s horrific, incident after incident being meted out to a population which is on its knees,” he said.
He added that Israel has carried out “relentless attacks on civilian population in the most awful of conditions in Jabalia, and people who fled to Beit Lahiya have themselves been bombed”.
“It’s really difficult for us to know precisely what’s going on given the intensity of fighting and given our lack of access,” he said.
Sam Rose, the UNRWA official, said that Israel has denied permission to bring in aid supplies to northern Gaza except for a couple of missions to hospitals in the north, which has been enduring a military siege.
“We are not typically given reasons; we are told it’s not possible to facilitate the missions for operational reasons,” he said.
“Most of the aid missions have only been able to get into Gaza City. We have not been able to get to north of Gaza City, which is where the siege is, which is where the intense military operation is taking place.
“Our ability to provide services is essentially curtailed. UNRWA has stopped, civil defence no longer working. Efforts and mission to retrieve bodies and trapped people underneath rubble have also been denied in the past several days,” Rose told Al Jazeera from Khan Younis.
On Wednesday morning, the Municipality of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza declared a state of disaster in the town. “We declare that the city is a disaster area due to the Israeli war of extermination and siege, and it has no food, water, hospitals, doctors, services, or communications,” it said.
Rose said that Palestinians in Gaza have been “on the verge of famine, on the verge of catastrophic food insecurity for months now”. “People are already dying, we are reaching close to a point where over 10 percent of Gaza’s population has either been killed or injured. And it’s inevitable what will happen eventually if you are not able to bring in supplies.”
On the Israeli ban on UNRWA, Rose said “no other organisation can take the load that UNRWA has been performing over the past 75 years. “Several generations of Palestinians are educated in UNRWA schools and millions of children were provided healthcare.
“No organisation is set up to do that, no organisation has the staff, has the system, has the understanding of what’s happening on the ground apart from UNRWA.”
