Photo: Anas al sharif
The Gaza Strip's interior ministry announced that several Israeli airstrikes were carried out on Tuesday on residential buildings in an area of Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, Kazinform news agency reported. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 50 people were killed and 150 others were injured in the attack. There were earlier reports of 400 dead, but they have not been confirmed.
Ministry spokesman Ayed al-Bazm told a news conference that six bombs fell in the residential area.
Video from the impact site shows several large craters. Heavily damaged buildings, but also rescuers and volunteers searching with their bare hands for survivors among the huge amount of concrete rubble.
Israel admitted it was behind the attack and said it was targeting a senior Hamas commander who was stationed outside the hospital. According to the statement, Ibrahim Biari, the commander of Hamas's Central Jabaliya Battalion, and dozens of militants were killed in the strike on the underground Hamas command centre. Hamas, for its part, denies the presence of its commander in the area under the hospital.
Since the beginning of the conflict, Israel has repeatedly claimed that there is an extensive network of tunnels under the Gaza Strip and that Hamas command centres are located under hospitals. The Israeli statement reiterated its call for civilians in northern Gaza to flee to the southern part.
Hamas terrorists continue to barbarically use Gaza's civil society as a protective shield. Sinwar (Yahya Sinwar is the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip), who is behind the massacres, has no regard for the interests of the people of Gaza and is responsible for the collapse of the Strip, the Israeli army said in a statement.
The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) claims that the strike damaged Hamas' command and control in the area, as well as its ability to direct military action against IDF soldiers operating throughout the Gaza Strip. It was reported that "numerous" terrorists were killed and "the underground terrorist infrastructure built beneath buildings used by terrorists also collapsed after the strike."
Eyewitnesses note that a few minutes after the Israeli attacks, the ground began to cave in and buildings fell into the openings. The attack on the Jabaliya camp sparked outrage throughout the Arab world and was condemned by humanitarian organisations. The foreign ministries of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar issued statements condemning the Israeli attacks on Jabaliya in the northern Gaza Strip.
Al Jazeera reports that a broadcast engineer at Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau lost 19 family members, including his father and two sisters, in an Israeli airstrike on Jabaliya camp. Qatar Media Network condemned the Israeli attack.
Jabaliya is the largest of the 8 Palestinian refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, located in the north of the enclave, with a population of 116,000. It covers an area of 1.4 square kilometres, making it one of the most densely populated places in the world.
The camp emerged in 1948 after the first Arab-Israeli war, and since then it has transformed from a tent city into a populated area with built-up residential buildings.
It will be recalled that the Bolivian Government has broken off diplomatic relations with Israel and Chile and Colombia have withdrawn their ambassadors from the country after the latter extended its military offensive against Hamas militants.
(Kazinform/RoZ)
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