Israel kills at least 93 in bombing of house for displaced in northern Gaza

At least 93 people were killed and dozens more injured in the early hours of Tuesday morning when Israel bombed a five-story house where displaced Palestinians have been staying in north Gaza’s Beit Lahia neighborhood, the government media office in Gaza said. 

The house, which belonged to the Abu Nasr family, housed around 200 displaced people, most of whom were women and children, according to the Gaza Government Media Office. 

Forty people are still missing, the media office added.

Northern Gaza has been under an unprecedented ground and aerial assault for more than three weeks that saw hundreds of Palestinians killed, thousands more displaced or forced to leave, houses, shelters and facilities destroyed, and hospitals besieged across the cities of the north by the advancing Israeli occupation forces.

The Abu Nasr house in Beit Lahia has been transformed into a shelter for families displaced from the besieged Jabalia camp before it was targeted by Israeli bombing today at dawn, Ezzedine Abu Rahma, a resident of Beit Lahia, told Mada Masr.

Abu Rahma and other civilians tried to rescue those trapped under the rubble in light of the fact that the Palestinian Civil Defense Forces suspended operations last week, after the Israeli military bombed the only fire truck in the governorate and arrested five civil defense personnel.

“We couldn’t rescue them. The neighbors and I are trying to do so but to no avail, as we don’t have the necessary equipment,” Abu Rahma told Mada Masr.

Many of the bodies that Abu Rahma said that he and others pulled from beneath the rubble were dismembered by the bombing, and the features of many had been badly disfigured to the point that they were not recognizable.

And due to the lack of medical equipment, many of those that they found alive beneath the rubble died from their injuries shortly afterward.

Residents laid down the bodies they had extracted on the sides of the road, he added.

The absence of doctors and medical staff has led to an unprecedented rise in the death toll of recent attacks, as more injured people end up dying, Health Ministry spokesperson Khalil al-Daqran told Mada Masr. Daqran stressed that the shortage of medical equipment and supplies will likely cause the number of victims of today’s attack to increase in the coming hours, noting that the majority of those injured had to undergo amputation of limbs or were left with deep burns, all of which require intensive care.

Since the start of the Occupation military’s extensive assault on northern Gaza, it has besieged the three main hospitals in the north: the Indonesian and Kamal Adwan hospitals in Beit Lahia and the Awda Hospital in Jabalia. Israeli forces cut off all supply routes to the three hospitals, causing a severe shortage of medical supplies, medicines, fuel and food.

The Occupation forces also stormed Kamal Adwan for two days last week, destroying its internal departments and medicine cabinets before retreating.

In statements to Al Jazeera on Tuesday, Gaza Field Hospitals Director Marwan al-Homs appealed to all surgeons and doctors in the hospital staff to return to treat those injured in the Beit Lahia bombing. However, even as Homs made the appeal, the Occupation continued bombing the vicinity of the hospital.

Amid the rising death toll of Israel’s attacks and the difficulty of movement under the siege, the people of Beit Lahia have turned the area’s main park, a nice spot for families and their children before the war, into a cemetery, where they buried the bodies of their relatives, journalist Yahya al-Madhoun, operating in the north, told Mada Masr. Biet Lahia’s market has also been filled with graves, after the Occupation forces prevented residents from reaching the neighborhood’s main cemetery, Madhoun added.