Palestinians transport bags of flour on a horse-drawn cart in the besieged Gaza Strip on November 5, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas.
| Photo Credit: AFP

An Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza has killed at least 20 people, mostly women and children, Palestinian officials said Tuesday (November 5, 2024), as Israel wages a nearly monthlong air and ground operation in what was already the most isolated and heavily destroyed part of the territory.

The strike late Monday (November 4, 2024) hit a home where several displaced families were sheltering in the town of Beit Lahiya, near the border with Israel, according to Hossam Abu Safiya, the director of the recently raided and barely functioning Kamal Adwan Hospital, which received the casualties.

The Israeli military said it targeted a weapons storage facility from which a militant had operated, and that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”

The dead included eight women and six children, according to a list provided by the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service. Separate strikes elsewhere in Gaza early Tuesday (November 5, 2024) killed another 10 people, according to health officials.

Israel launched the offensive in the north after saying Hamas militants had regrouped there. The Army has returned to several areas of Gaza multiple times after previous operations, as Hamas continues to carry out hit-and-run attacks on troops and fire occasional rockets into Israel.

The military has ordered the complete evacuation of Beit Lahiya, the nearby town of Beit Hanoun and the urban Jabaliya refugee camp, and has allowed almost no humanitarian aid into the area for over a month. That has drawn rebukes from the Biden administration, which has warned that U.S. laws might force it to curb military aid to Israel if more aid is not allowed in.

Tens of thousands of people have fled to nearby Gaza City in the latest wave of displacement within the besieged territory. Around 90% of the population of 2.3 million have fled during the war, often multiple times.

The three hospitals serving the area have been largely inaccessible because of the fighting, and ambulances have stopped operating. Israeli troops raided Kamal Adwan Hospital last month, saying Hamas militants were sheltering there, allegations denied by Palestinian health officials.

The offensive has raised fears among Palestinians that Israel is implementing a surrender-or-starve plan for northern Gaza proposed by former generals, in which civilians would be ordered out, aid would be cut off and anyone remaining would be considered a fighter.

The Israeli military has denied receiving such orders, but the government has not said whether it is adopting part or all of the plan.

Palestinian officials said a separate wave of Israeli strikes early Tuesday killed 10 people, including four children and two women.

One strike hit a house in the Tufah neighborhood in Gaza City, killing two children and their parents, according to the Health Ministry’s emergency service. Two other children were wounded, it said.

In the central town of Zuweida, an Israeli airstrike hit a tent where a displaced family was sheltering, killing four people, including a mother and her two children, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the nearby city of Deir al-Balah. Another strike hit a house in Deir al-Balah, killing two people, the hospital said. An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies at the hospital morgue.

The Israeli military says it only targets militants and accuses them of hiding among civilians. It rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.

The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, taking another 250 people hostage. Around 100 captives are still inside Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its toll but says over half of those killed were women and children.

Cairo:

Israeli military strikes on Gaza overnight killed at least 19 Palestinians, medics said on Saturday, while forces continued to push deeper into the Jabalia area, where international relief agencies say thousands of people are trapped.

Residents said Israeli forces continued to pound Jabalia, which is in the north of the enclave and is the largest of the enclave’s historic refugee camps, from the air and ground.

There has been no fresh Israeli comment but the military said in past days that forces operating in Jabalia and nearby areas killed dozens of militants, located weapons and dismantled military infrastructure.

The operation in this area began a week ago and the military said then it aimed to fight against Hamas militants waging attacks and to prevent Hamas from regrouping.

Palestinian health officials put the number of people killed in Jabalia over the past week at around 150.

On Friday, Israeli strikes hit four houses in Jabalia, killing around 20 people and wounding dozens, medics said. The Israeli military has sent troops into the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya as well as Jabalia and ordered residents to evacuate their homes and head to safe areas south of the enclave.

Palestinian and United Nations officials say there are no safe areas in Gaza. They have also voiced concerns over severe shortages of food, fuel, and medical supplies in northern Gaza, and said there is a risk of famine there.

The Ministry of Health said Israel’s threats to evacuate three hospitals operating there by force put the safety of patients and medical staff at risk.

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, aimed at eliminating the operator group Hamas, has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians since it began a year ago, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and has laid waste to the enclave.

The war began after a Hamas-led assault on October 7, 2023, on southern Israeli communities in which 1,200 people were killed and about 250 were taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.

In a statement on Saturday, Hamas said Israel’s “massacre against the civilians” aimed to punish the residents of Jabalia for refusing to leave their homes. It also said it was a sign of Israel’s military failure to defeat the group.

Israel has denied it targets civilians.

The armed wings of Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and smaller other factions said their fighters attacked Israeli forces in Jabalia and nearby areas with anti-tank rockets, and mortar fire.

POLIO VACCINATIONS

United Nations officials said on Friday an Israeli offensive and evacuation orders in northern Gaza might affect the second phase of its polio vaccination campaign set to start next week.

The territory’s health ministry announced on Saturday that the campaign would begin on Monday in central Gaza Strip areas and would last three days before moving to other territories.

Aid groups carried out an initial round of vaccinations last month after a baby was partially paralysed by the type 2 poliovirus in August, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.

As in the first phase, humanitarian pauses in the fighting in Gaza are planned, in order to reach hundreds of thousands of children.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)