An Israeli air strike flattened several large residential buildings in the heavily populated Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza on Tuesday, leaving a massive crater and at least 120 dead and 400 people wounded, mainly women and children, according to Indonesian Hospital in nearby Beit Lahia that received 400 casualties from the blast, reported Al Jazeera and BBC.
The missile triggered a massive explosion, which according to witnesses felt like an earthquake, destroying multiple apartment buildings in the heart of the refugee camp, where — before the conflict — 116,000 Palestinian refugees lived in a space of about 1.4 square kilometers.
Israel acknowledged carrying out the attack, asserting it was directed against a Hamas commander whom it claimed was killed, along with a “large number of terrorists” from Hamas’ Central Jabalia Battalion who were allegedly accompanying the commander at the time, according to a statement by the IDF.
Hamas later issued a statement denying that the commander had been killed in the strike.
Israel has declared that it is now in the “second phase” of its present campaign to eradicate Hamas, which commenced after Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 cross-border assault from Gaza that killed 1,400 people in Israel and took another 240 or so captive.
According to Gaza’s health ministry, over 8,500 Palestinians have now been killed in the territory since then, while supplies of food, water, fuel, and medication for its 2.2 million citizens are critically low due to Israel’s total embargo.
One third (12) of the strip’s 35 hospitals have been forced to close, according to multiple reports. Without available medications, women are having to have Cesarian section surgery without anesthesia.
Gaza is in a severe humanitarian crisis, with need “far outpacing existing levels of assistance,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said yesterday.
As Israel continues to bombard the besieged territory and now is stepping up its ground assault on Gaza, Guterres said, “I am deeply alarmed by the intensification of the conflict between Israel and Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in Gaza.”
He has called for an “immediate cease fire.”