GAZA CITY (Dispatches) -- An Israeli airstrike on the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza on Tuesday martyred at least 200 Palestinians, according to Palestinian officials speaking to Al-Jazeera Arabic.
Officials at the Indonesian Hospital said they had seen at least 50 fatalities, with the health ministry putting the death toll at 200 so far.
The Zionist regime had carried out “over 30 hours of relentless bombing on the Gaza Strip” on Tuesday, according to Al Jazeera English correspondent Youmna Elsayed who is based in Gaza.
“Three massive massacres have taken place in Jabalia camp, Al-Shati and Al-Nuseirat,” she added.
The Palestinian interior ministry said there were 400 dead and wounded in total. A ministry spokesperson said an entire residential complex had been destroyed.
“These buildings house hundreds of citizens. The occupation’s air force destroyed this district with six U.S.-made bombs. It is the latest massacre caused by Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip,” interior ministry spokesperson Iyad al-Bazum told reporters.
“The international community must act immediately to stop Israel before it is too late.”
Footage from the camp showed buildings completely leveled to the ground, and panicked Palestinian residents carrying wounded children away from the scene.
A correspondent for Al Jazeera Arabic on the ground said it will take “weeks” to save and pull people from under the rubble due to the scale of destruction.
“The massacre is huge, it is impossible to count how many homes have been destroyed. People’s limbs are scattered around everywhere,” he added.
Civil defense teams rushed to the scene to try and rescue people, searching through the rubble with their bare hands. Many families were in their homes when the bombs hit.
Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian humanitarian and physician, said that Gaza is now in the “darkest hour,” and that Israel had committed the “worst massacre,” following the bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp.
“This is the time everyone should stand together and denounce any attacks against civilians,” he said.
“This is the worst massacre I have seen, at least 15 buildings have been completely destroyed. These are barbaric Israeli attacks which have happened while the medical sector is breaking down. It is clear that these are war crimes and there is no excuse for it,” he added.
He also called on countries to stop supplying the Zionist regime
with fuel as long as it continues to bomb civilians in Gaza.
At least 8,610 Palestinians have been martyred in Israeli bombardment since October 7, which came after a surprise operation by Hamas that day in which around 1,400 Zionists were killed and at least 240 were taken captive.
The Palestinian death toll includes 3,542 children and 2,187 women, according to the health ministry.
Around 2,000 people are still missing, including 1,100 children. The vast majority of these people are believed to be dead and buried under rubble.
At least 21,543 have suffered injuries of various severity.
Jabaliya camp is the largest of eight refugee camps in the besieged Gaza Strip, housing over 116,000 people officially registered with UNRAWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees. The actual number of people in the camp is likely to be much higher.
It was established in 1948 following the Nakba (or catastrophe), when 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes to make way for the creation of Israel.
The camp is 1.4 square kilometers, and includes 32 UNRWA installations, 26 schools and two health centers.
Before the Zionist regime’s complete siege on the enclave and ruthless bombardment, Jabalia camp was already struggling with electricity cuts and contaminated water supply due to the 16 year blockade on the Gaza Strip.
UNRWA said three of its staff members had been killed in Israeli air strikes in the last 24 hours.
A total of 67 of their staff members have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war on October 7.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said Gaza has become “a graveyard for children”.
“Our gravest fears about the reported numbers of children killed becoming dozens, then hundreds, and ultimately thousands were realized in just a fortnight. The numbers are appalling; reportedly more than 3,450 children killed; staggeringly this rises significantly every day,” the organization said.
“Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children. It’s a living hell for everyone else,” the statement added.
Meanwhile, the director general of the New York office of the United Nations High Commissioner of Human rights resigned over the “text-book case of genocide” unfolding in Gaza.
In a letter dated October 28, Volker Turk stated that he was writing “at a moment of great anguish,” as the world sees “a genocide unfolding before our eyes.”
He said his organization appears “powerless to stop it.”
“The current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicitly statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate,” the letter read.