Israel wages deadly Gaza strikes as northern areas issue plea for help

This content was published on October 30, 2024 - 18:04

5 minutes

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Dawoud Abu Alkas

CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) -Israel pummeled the Gaza Strip with new bombardments that killed at least 30 people on Wednesday, Palestinian medics said, a day after one of the deadliest single strikes of the year-old war killed scores in the north of the enclave.

Eight of Wednesday’s victims were killed in a strike on the Salateen area of Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza. The area is near where medics said at least 93 people were killed or missing on Tuesday in an Israeli strike Washington called “horrifying”.

The Israeli military assault that has laid waste to the Gaza Strip and killed tens of thousands of people shows no signs of slowing as Israel wages a new war against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and its backer the United States tries after a year of failed attempts to broker ceasefires for both.

Northern Gaza, where Israel said in January it had dismantled militant group Hamas’ command structure, is currently the focus of the military’s assault. It sent tanks into Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia earlier this month to flush out Hamas fighters who it said had regrouped in the area.

The new operation has killed hundreds of Palestinians. On Wednesday, the Gaza health ministry said at least 30 people were killed in Israeli strikes across the enclave, at least 23 of them in northern areas. Tuesday’s strike on a house in Beit Lahiya killed 93, including 20 children, medical workers say.

An Israeli military official said that airstrike, which demolished a building, was not intended to destroy the structure and was aimed at a person on the roof whom troops had identified as a “spotter” amid heavy fighting.

The official, who could not be identified by name, said there were “discrepancies” between the numbers reported dead and what the military had observed but did not elaborate.

Israel says its northern assault has killed hundreds militants. Hamas has not said how many fighters have died.

CRIES FOR HELP

The assault in the north, in addition to new rules introduced by Israel and a halt to most private food deliveries, has also choked aid and food supplies to their lowest level since the beginning of the war.

Israel says it has continued food deliveries into Gaza and blames the United Nations for failing to feed Gazans.

Israeli statistics reviewed by Reuters on Wednesday show that aid shipments allowed into Gaza in October remained at their lowest levels since October 2023.

Officials in Beit Lahiya issued a statement urging world powers and aid agencies to halt Israel’s attacks and bring in basic medical supplies, fuel and food, saying the latest military actions had left the area “without food, without water, without hospitals, without doctors.”

Dr. Eid Sabbah of Beit Lahiya’s Kamal Adwan hospital told Reuters that bodies and injured people remained trapped under rubble.

“Whoever is injured, just lies there on the ground and whoever is killed can’t be transported, except by mule-drawn cart,” he said.

Israel’s decision this week to ban the U.N. relief agency UNRWA from operating on its territory could have a disastrous impact on humanitarian efforts in Gaza, U.N. officials said.

The Gaza war began after Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that for years ruled the territory, attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.

The Israeli assault has decimated Gaza and killed more than 43,000 people, Palestinian authorities say.

In a separate assault on Lebanese Hezbollah, a Hamas ally which has fired thousands of rockets into Israel killing dozens of people over the past year, Israeli forces have bombarded parts of Beirut and areas of the south of the country. The Israeli assault has killed more than 2,700 people, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

NO END IN SIGHT

Israel’s military and intelligence operations have decapitated the leadership of both Hamas and Hezbollah, including Hezbollah leader and Iran ally, Hassan Nasrallah.

Yet Israel’s wars show no signs of slowing.

Israel presses on with assaults on Gaza despite the killing this month of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, a mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks whose death was top priority in the war. Israel says 365 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza over the past year, 19 of them since the start of October.

U.S. mediators are working on a proposal to halt hostilities between Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, starting with a 60-day ceasefire, two sources told Reuters, but Israel pressed its offensive, bombarding Lebanon’s eastern city of Baalbek.

As families fled the Beit Lahiya area last week, parents wheeled children in prams and wooden carts and dragged suitcases through the mud.

Dalia al-Kharawat, a mother-of-five from Jabalia, begged locals in Gaza City to let her stay and now sleeps in the open-air car park of a destroyed building with her children.

“When we need to sleep, we go here in the rubble, the sand, the broken glass. There is no place at the school shelters,” she said.

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi and Dawoud Abu Alkas; Writing by John Davison;Editing by Ros Russell)