Israeli warplanes carried out more strikes in northern Gaza on Sunday, reportedly destroying a home in the Jabaliya area that had been under siege for weeks, killing and wounding dozens, including many women and children.
The death toll is one of the biggest in a single strike so far in Jabaliya, where hundreds of people have died since a major Israeli operation in the area began last month.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said 25 people had died in the pre-dawn attack on Sunday, including 13 children, while another 30 people were reported to have been wounded.
Dr Fadel Naim, the director of the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, which received bodies after the strike, said the death toll was 17, including nine women, but the total was likely to rise as rescue efforts continued.
The official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, and Hamas media put the number of people killed at 32. There was no immediate confirmation of the tally by the territory’s health ministry.
Israel’s military said it hit “infrastructure” in which militants were operating and “posed a threat” to troops in the area.
“Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians,” a military spokesperson said.
Anas al-Sharif, a reporter for the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network, said the home destroyed in the raid belonged to the Aloush family, adding that no civil defence agencies or ambulances had been able to reach the area due to the Israeli siege and that local people were still searching for more victims.
UN officials said the last civil defence post in Jabaliya was destroyed in a strike more than a week ago, leaving the area without any effective rescue service.
The Israeli military launched its offensive on Jabaliya and the nearby towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun early last month which it said was aimed at preventing Hamas from regrouping but which Palestinians and human rights groups say is aimed at depopulating northern Gaza.
Dozens have died in a series of airstrikes on Jabaliya and neighbouring areas in recent days. With only poor communications to northern Gaza and no international reporters allowed into the territory, exact details of casualties are difficult to verify. Witnesses report intense fighting between troops and militants.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Sunday that at least 43,603 people had been killed in the Israeli offensive launched 13 months ago. More than half of identified casualties are women and children. Thousands more are believed to be buried under the rubble.
The toll includes 51 deaths in the previous 24 hours, according to the ministry, which also said 102,929 people had been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing about 1,200, mostly civilians, and abducting 250.
Ramy Abdu, the chair of the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, which tracks casualties of the Gaza war, said last month that his team of more than 40 researchers in Gaza had identified 365 families that had lost 10 or more members from the beginning of the war until August, and 2,750 who had lost at least three.
Early on Sunday the Israeli military claimed in a post on X it had “eliminated dozens of terrorists and destroyed terrorist infrastructures and a warehouse of weapons” in Jabaliya. Israel says it has issued evacuation orders telling civilians to leave Jabaliya for their own safety and accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields to protect its fighters and weapons, a charge the militant Islamist group denies.
Aid agencies, medics and witnesses say those trapped by the fighting in Jabaliya and the north of Gaza are suffering appalling conditions, with very limited water, food stocks running out, debris everywhere and continuing bombardment and combat.
Food experts this week said northern Gaza faced imminent famine. In a rare alert, the independent Famine Review Committee said: “If no effective action is taken by stakeholders with influence, the scale of this looming catastrophe is likely to dwarf anything we have seen so far in the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023.”
The growing desperation comes as the deadline approaches next week of a 30-day ultimatum the Biden administration gave Israel to raise the level of humanitarian assistance allowed into Gaza or risk restrictions on US military assistance.
The US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said Israel had made some progress by announcing the opening of a new crossing into central Gaza and approving new delivery routes.
But he said Israel must do more. “It’s not just sufficient to open new roads if more humanitarian assistance isn’t going through those roads.”
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said he had spoken three times with Donald Trump since Tuesday’s US election and that they “see eye-to-eye regarding the Iranian threat and all of its components”.
Iran has launched two massive barrages of missiles and other aerial weapons at Israel this year, and Israel has responded. Hamas and Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Islamist movement, have historic ties with Tehran.
In Lebanon, Israel’s air campaign against Hezbollah continued on Sunday with reports of a strike on a house in the main eastern city of Baalbek.
The Lebanese state-run National News Agency said: “Enemy aircraft launched a strike on a house in the al-Laqees neighbourhood.”
Earlier, NNA reported a rare Israeli strike north of Beirut, on the Shia-majority village of Almat, which is located in a mostly Christian region.
Israel launched an intense air offensive mainly targeting Hezbollah bastions in Lebanon’s east and south and in southern Beirut on 23 September and a week later sent in ground troops.
The escalation followed nearly a year of low-intensity, cross-border attacks by Hezbollah in support of Hamas after the 7 October attack. Israeli military officials said at least 25 rockets were fired by Hezbollah on Sunday. At least two drones were also intercepted.
Underlining the regional extent of Israel’s attack on Hezbollah, an Israeli airstrike on Sunday hit a residential building in the Damascus suburb of Sayeda Zeinab. The Syrian defence ministry said seven civilians were killed, reported the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based opposition war monitor, suggested Hezbollah was targeted. Israel did not immediately comment.
Additional reporting by Helen Livingstone. Reuters, Agence France-Presse and Associated Press also contributed to this report
