Israeli strikes kill dozens across Gaza, including 27 in one attack

CNN
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An Israeli airstrike on a multi-storey building in northern Gaza killed at least 27 people, aid officials said, as the Israeli military issued fresh evacuation orders in the area, where it is waging a major offensive.

The Mbahouh family’s home in Jabalya was hit Thursday afternoon, according to Gaza Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal.

He said the four-story property housed more than 50 displaced people, and some had been trapped in a warehouse at the base of the building.

CNN is reaching out to the Israeli military about the target of the attack.

Also on Thursday, an Israeli airstrike hit the Al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City. Another killed at least four people in the Al-Rimal school, west of Gaza City, Basal said.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed the airstrike on Al-Shati refugee camp, claiming the school was being used as a “command and control center” by Hamas. The IDF said it is not commenting on the second attack without coordinates.

The Israeli military campaign in Gaza since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks has destroyed entire neighborhoods and rendered large parts of the strip uninhabitable.

At least 43,469 Palestinians have been killed and another 102,561 people injured in Gaza, according to the health ministry there.

Human rights organizations warned about “apocalyptic” survival challenges for Palestinians trapped in Jabalya, home to a large refugee camp, where the Israeli military in early October stepped up air and ground attacks it says are aimed at Hamas’ renewed presence in the area.

The British-based NGO, Medical Aid for Palestinians, accused Israel of “making Palestinian survival in northern Gaza impossible as part of a policy of sustained pressure and forced expulsion,” in a statement to CNN on Monday.

Israeli airstrikes and shelling have reportedly killed at least 30 other people in Gaza since Wednesday. Most of these Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks in the Beit Lahiya area of ​​northern Gaza.

An Israeli airstrike hit a residential building in the Mashrou neighborhood of Beit Lahiya, killing six people and wounding several others, said journalists and medics, who added that another six people were killed in the second attack in the same area. Four others were killed in a separate drone strike in Beit Lahiya, they said.

In addition, according to local journalists, six people had been killed as a result of Israeli artillery shelling west of the Jabalya camp in northern Gaza.

The head of field hospitals in Gaza, Dr. Marwan Al-Hams, told CNN on Thursday that “the health situation in the north is more than catastrophic… Three hospitals in the northern part of the strip are out of order and we cannot perform operations.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that “troops began operating in the area of ​​Beit Lahiya following prior intelligence information and a situational assessment indicating the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure.”

The IDF said it was also continuing operations in Jabalya in northern Gaza and had killed about “50 terrorists” over the past 24 hours.

An aid worker displaced in Gaza City spoke of the mental anguish of being uprooted from one neighborhood to another after the Israeli military issued new evacuation orders to Palestinians in northern Gaza on Thursday.

Mahmoud Shalabi, deputy director of programs for MAP, said he has been forced to flee at least seven times since October 2023 – including from northern Gaza to Gaza City. Shalabi’s testimony was shared with CNN by MAP.

“I am really unsure whether I will be able to see my home again. And even if I am allowed to go back, will our home remain as it is?” he said Thursday. “It is as if it is a new Nakba.

“We are being forced to flee our homes under brutal force,” he added. “My three children keep asking me, ‘When are we going back home?’ And I really can’t answer that question.

“To exist on this land is to resist,” Shalabi said. “I don’t want to go. I want to live a dignified life.”

The military’s Arab spokesman, Avichay Adraee, published on X a demand that residents leave several areas of northern Gaza, saying that “terrorist organizations are once again launching rocket attacks against the State of Israel.”

Adraee said the “specified area has been warned several times in the past. We inform you that the specified area is considered a dangerous combat zone, so for your safety, please move south immediately.”

Elsewhere, in central Gaza, the Civil Defense said it had found eight bodies after an attack on the Al-Nuseirat refugee camp on Wednesday night, according to a CNN stringer on the ground.

A male witness, Salim Mohammed Alaa Abu Najeh, told CNN that his sister’s home was targeted.

“They were at home when a missile suddenly hit their building… They have no connection to any organizations or anything like that. They were unarmed, poor people in difficult circumstances who struggled to build this home.”

Among those in the building were orphans who had been raised by their grandmother, Abu Najeh said.

CNN has asked the IDF about the target of the attack.

Israeli operations also continue in southern Gaza, where the IDF said on Thursday that a “number of armed terrorists” had been killed in the Rafah area.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said paramedics had transferred five bodies to the hospital as a result of an Israeli drone strike in the Al-Janina neighborhood east of Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip. Journalists said four of those killed were from the same family.

In addition, they said two people were killed in an attack launched from an Israeli military quadcopter.