Palestinian health officials said at least 50 Palestinians were killed when Israeli air strikes hit a densely populated refugee camp in north Gaza on Tuesday, as Israeli ground forces battled Hamas gunmen based in a sprawling tunnel network.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed international calls for a halt to the fighting to enable emergency aid deliveries to civilians suffering from critical shortages of food, medicine, drinking water and fuel.
UN and other aid officials said Gaza’s civilians were engulfed by a public health catastrophe, with hospitals struggling to treat snowballing casualties as electricity supplies peter out.
Officials at Gaza’s Indonesian Hospital said more than 50 Palestinians were killed and 150 wounded when tonnes of aerial explosives struck residential dwellings in the heart of the Jabalia refugee camp in urbanised north Gaza.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military. It has accused Hamas of using civilian buildings as cover for fighters, commanders and weaponry, accusations the group denies.
Footage obtained by Reuters showed a swathe of destruction, with deep bomb craters and gutted, multi-storey cement dwellings as people dug through mounds of rubble with their hands in search of loved ones, dead or alive.
Medics lay the dead swaddled in white cloth in a long line outside the hospital, located in the adjacent town of Beit Lahiya, as the injured including wailing children were rushed inside for treatment amid scenes of pandemonium.
A Hamas statement said there were 400 dead and injured in Jabalia, which lies on Gaza City’s outskirts within the main northern ground zone of combat between dug-in Hamas and Israeli troops and tanks. Jabalia houses families of refugees from wars with Israel dating back to 1948.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed again on Tuesday for the protection of civilians caught in the conflict, stressing the need for proportional behaviour and precaution by all parties.
“International humanitarian law establishes clear rules that cannot be ignored. It is not an a la carte menu and cannot be applied selectively,” Guterres said in a statement.
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