Occupation commits new massacres in Jabalia, advances to outskirts of Gaza City

Israel moved tanks into the outskirts of Gaza City on Saturday afternoon as part of the ongoing campaign in the north of the strip that has seen the Occupation besiege neighborhoods, kill Palestinians attempting to flee to safety, and shell residential buildings.

The Israeli campaign began eight days ago in a marked escalation of violence in the northern part of the strip, which has been beset by extreme violence for the last year, and comes in light of Israeli plans to depopulate the northern half of Gaza and turn it into a militarily controlled “warzone” to pressure resistance factions.

Due to the Israeli operations over the past eight days, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are currently trapped in northern Gaza, facing the risk of death either from Israeli bombing, direct shooting, or hunger and thirst amid Israeli forces’ besieging several areas of the north, eyewitnesses and Civil Defense Authority spokesperson Mahmoud Basal told Mada Masr.

Late on Friday night, the Israeli military committed a massacre in Jabalia, destroying a whole residential block in the camp, eyewitnesses also told Mada Masr. Basal said that Israel killed 15 people and injured dozens more in the attack, most of whom were children.

Speaking about Friday’s massacre, Omar al-Bayed, a resident of northern Gaza, told Mada Masr that the Israeli military targeted the residential block located around the Omari Mosque in Jabalia, leaving dozens of victims still under the rubble. Bayed added that the Israeli aircraft are flying intensively in the area, preventing his family from leaving the house.

Mohamed Salman, a resident of Jabalia, told Mada Masr that the Occupation forces opened fire on Friday night on dozens of Palestinians in the Fouqa school, which houses people displaced to Jabalia, noting that ambulance crews have not yet arrived to rescue the injured.

The Occupation carried out continuous raids on Jabalia, Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia, and the Saftawi and Jalaa areas on the outskirts of Gaza City on Saturday, Basal said. He added that the Civil Defense team has been inundated with appeals from families trapped in their homes, yet Israeli forces are preventing the team from accessing many of the besieged areas.

Eyewitnesses separately told Mada Masr that Israeli tanks advanced on Saturday afternoon to Gaza City’s limits from the north, occupied the Saftawi area, and started firing heavily at homes on Jalaa Street.

With the aim of expanding its aggression, the Israeli military also ordered on Saturday residents of an area it designated as “D5” — which includes Jabalia, the northern outskirts of Gaza City, and parts of the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood — to evacuate their homes and head via the Salah Eddin Road toward the so-called “humanitarian zone” in southern Gaza.

The targeted area houses tens of thousands of residents, in addition to thousands more who were displaced there from Jabalia refugee camp and the towns of Jabalia, Beit Lahia, and Beit Hanoun since the beginning of the Israeli ground incursion on October 6.

However, those who have tried to flee the northern part of the strip in line with the Occupation’s orders have been directly targeted.

“I tried with my family to get out, but the road was blocked with quadcopters that shot at us as soon as we got out of the house,” Khaled Abu Oun, a resident who is unable to leave the area, told Mada Masr earlier this week. “My brother’s leg was injured, so we had to pull him back to the house. He has been bleeding for two consecutive days, and we have no food or water.”

The World Food Program (WFP) announced on Saturday that food aid lines to the northern Gaza Strip have been interrupted, explaining that food aid has not entered northern Gaza since October 1 and warning of the catastrophic repercussions of the situation on the food security of thousands of Palestinian families.

The WFP statement added that food distribution points in northern Gaza were forced to close due to the continued shelling and evacuation orders, noting that a fire broke out in the only operating bakery in Jabalia after it was bombed.