Israeli Airstrikes Crush Apartments in Gaza Refugee Camp
A barrage of Israeli airstrikes leveled apartment buildings in a refugee camp near Gaza City on Tuesday, with rescuers clawing through the destruction to pull men, women and children from the rubble. Israel said the strike, which targeted a senior Hamas military leader, destroyed a militant command center and an underground tunnel network.
The toll from the attack in the Jabaliya camp was not immediately known. The director of the nearby hospital where casualties were taken, Dr. Atef Al-Kahlot, said hundreds of people were wounded or killed, but he did not provide exact figures.
The Israeli military said dozens of militants were killed, including a key Hamas commander for northern Gaza.
Israel aggressively defended the attack, with military spokesman Jonathan Conricus saying the targeted commander had also been a key planner of the bloody Oct. 7 rampage that started the war, and that the apartment buildings collapsed only because the vast underground Hamas complex had been destroyed.
Neither side’s account could be independently confirmed.
Early Wednesday, the Palestinian telecoms company Paltel reported a “complete disruption” of internet and mobile phone services in Gaza, marking the second time in five days that Gaza residents were largely cut off from the world.
Communications were previously cut off late Friday until early Sunday, coinciding with the entry of large numbers of ground troops into Gaza as Israel said it was beginning a new stage in the war. Attempts to reach Gaza residents by phone were unsuccessful early Wednesday.
Humanitarian aid agencies have warned that such blackouts severely disrupt their work in an already dire situation in Gaza.
Several hundred thousand Palestinians remain in northern Gaza in the path of the ground assault. They have crowded into homes or are packed by the thousands into hospitals that are already overwhelmed with patients and running low on supplies.
The strike in Jabaliya underlined the anticipated surge in casualties on both sides as Israeli troops battling Hamas militants advance deeper into the northern Gaza Strip toward dense, residential neighborhoods. Israel has vowed to crush Hamas’ ability to govern Gaza or threaten Israel following the Oct. 7 assault, which ignited the war. Hamas, an Islamic militant group, openly calls for the destruction of Israel.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military confirmed Wednesday that nine more soldiers were killed in fighting in northern Gaza, bringing the total of military casualties since the start of the ground operation to 11.
In the Jabaliya refugee camp, a densely built-up area of small streets on Gaza City’s outskirts, dozens of rescuers searched for survivors amid a series of obliterated buildings and others that had partially collapsed.
Source: Hürriyet Daily News
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