DEIR AL-BALAH: Gaza’s Health Ministry said an Israeli strike on a five-story building where displaced Palestinians were sheltering in northern Gaza killed at least 34 people early Tuesday, more than half of them women and children.
The ministry’s emergency service said another 20 people were wounded in the strike in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, near the Israeli border.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
The strike comes hours after Israeli lawmakers passed two laws banning the main U.N. agency providing aid to people in Gaza by barring it from operating on Israeli soil, severing ties with it and labeling it a “terror organization.”
Israel has intensified its offensive in northern Gaza, with many international organisations and countries terming its operations as “ethnic cleansing.” The Israeli military has called on Palestinians to evacuate northern Gaza and said that its operation in Jabaliya would last “several more weeks.”
Jabaliya is an urban refugee camp in northern Gaza that dates back to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians famously known as ‘Nakba’, surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948.
Israeli forces raided the Kamal Adwan Hospital, the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza on Friday. The army detained hundreds of Palestinians from the hospital including health care workers, patients and others who had sought shelter in the facility. The army also reportedly killed the hospital director’s son as he refused to leave the hospital.
Israel has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians since the beginning of its recent war on Gaza, officials in Gaza reported Monday. This includes at least 17,000 children and more than 11,400 woman. Israel has killed more than 174 journalists and over 1000 healthcare workers in Gaza.
(With inputs from Online Desk)