Horrifying Massacre: Scores Martyred in Beit Lahiya

Date: 20 October 2024 - 23:06

News ID: ۱۳۲۶۶۰

CAIRO (Dispatches) -- A total of 87 people were martyred or missing under the rubble after an Israeli attack on Saturday on northern Gaza’s town of Beit Lahiya, with more than 40 wounded, the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry said on Sunday.
In the past 24 hours 108 people have been killed in bombings across the territory, according to local health officials on Sunday.
“The nightmare in Gaza is intensifying. Horrifying scenes are unfolding in the northern strip amidst relentless Israeli strikes and an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis. I condemn the continuing attacks on civilians,” Tor Wennesland, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said in a statement.
“Nowhere is safe in Gaza … We owe it to the families suffering in Gaza and Israel. The war must stop now,” he added.
Bombings late on Saturday night in the town of Beit Lahia flattened several houses and an apartment block, killing members of several families, according to Raheem Kheder, a medic. Among the dead were two parents and their four children, and a woman, her son and her daughter-law and their four children, he said.
The internet and phone services have been down in parts of Gaza since Saturday evening, complicating the rescue operation.
In a post on X, Mounir al-Bursh, the director general of the health ministry, said the flood of wounded from the strikes compounded “an already catastrophic situation for the health care system” in northern Gaza.
Gaza’s health ministry said rescue operations were being hindered by communications problems and by the Israeli military operation still going on around the area, the ministry said.
“Victims are still under the rubble and on the road and ambulance teams and civil emergency can’t reach them,” it said in a statement.
The strike, late on Saturday night, came two weeks into a major operation around the town of Jabalia, just to the south of Beit Lahiya, where Zionist troops backed with tanks have been trying to squeeze out Hamas fighters.
Sweeping evacuation orders for the estimated 400,000 people still living in the northern third of the territory, the blockage of aid and food deliveries and the targeting of civilian infrastructure such as hospitals have led rights groups to accuse Israel of the war crime of seeking to forcibly displace the remaining population.
Residents in Jabalia said Israeli forces raided shelters housing displaced families and detained dozens of men.
More than 42,600 Palestinians have been martyred during Israel’s ground invasion, according to Palestinian health ministry figures, and thousands more are thought to be buried under the rubble. Much of the coastal enclave has been destroyed and most of its 2.3 million population has been displaced.
As the fighting has continued, health officials have reported stark shortages of food, fuel and medical supplies to treat patients in the three remaining hospitals still partially operating in the area.
Officials at the Kamal Adwan, Indonesian and Al-Awda hospitals said their facilities were besieged by Zionist forces, and at Kamal Adwan Hospital
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