AT least 22 people, including women and children, have been killed in an Israeli attack on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza as Israeli forces press on with their ground assault in the area.
As the death toll mounted on Saturday, the Israeli military issued evacuation orders for northern Gaza with instructions for residents near Jabalia to evacuate to the south of the enclave.
The Israel military launched a deadly offensive in the Jabalia area a week ago which it claims is aimed at stopping Palestinian group Hamas from regrouping. The attacks have trapped thousands of Palestinian civilians, international charity Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, said.
Hamas on Saturday slammed the Israeli army and said its “massacres are a continuation of the ongoing criminal genocide against our people, shielded by American support”.
The attack that wounded more than 90 people was an attempt to “punish the population for their resilience and rejection of displacement”, the group said in a statement.
Palestinian news agency Wafa reported on Saturday that Israeli fighter jets bombed a multistorey apartment block in Jabalia on Friday night, hitting four inhabited homes and killing 22 people.
At least 30 people were injured, and 14 people remain missing and are believed to be buried under the rubble, according to Wafa.
Reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said that “powerful explosions were heard in the northern part of the Gaza Strip”, adding that many of the casualties were “arriving at the hospital either in pieces or soaked in blood”.
The Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north was perilously close to running out of fuel and staff said Israeli soldiers had ordered them to leave.
Reporting from the facility, Al Jazeera’s Moath al-Kahlout described the weeklong siege as “suffocating”.
