Israeli airstrikes in Gaza city neighbourhoods killed 23 people, including eight children, and injured more than 70 on Wednesday, Gaza Civil Defense Services said. About 20 people remained missing, but rescuers had little equipment to pull them out of the tile rub, the group said.
Israeli forces said they were targeting Hamas operatives who said they were responsible for planning the attack. It did not name the operatives or provide details. The deaths of civil defense that did not distinguish between civilians and combatants could not be independently verified. Gaza's Ministry of Health has yet to announce the number of deaths.
Civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassador said the strike has destroyed eight homes in Shajaye, an already intense hit region.
Video footage issued by Reuters showed rescuers trying to free people like dust from the wreckage with shovels, tools and bare hands. They tensed as they pushed the collapsed ceiling from the man trapped flat below.
Two men walked through the moonscape, the street, and lifted their tiny bodies with colorful blankets. The donkey's cart pulled away from his body wrapped in another blanket.
Hazem Rajab, 49, was sitting on the sofa in his living room when the ceiling caves down after hearing the sudden explosion, he said in a phone interview.
The rescuers arrived about 15 minutes later, he said. Rajab said it was protected by concrete pillars that fell on him and his two children. However, his 12-year-old son, Yusuf, was killed.
It has only been around three months since Rajab's wife, another son and three daughters were killed in “the greatest loss of our lives,” Rajab said.
Additional airstrikes were hit elsewhere in the neighborhood on Wednesday, Mata said, but rescuers were still unable to respond to those strikes.
Israel faces international condemnation for airstrikes that killed tens of thousands of people in Gaza. Israeli forces say Hamas operatives have been embedded among civilians. On Wednesday, he said that “many measures” were taken to reduce harm to civilians prior to the attack, using aviation surveillance, “other intelligence” and accurate weapons.
A New York Times investigation finds that Israeli forces have loosened rules regarding the number of civilians that could be at risk in each airstrike, and international law experts point out that Israel has an obligation to protect civilians.
Dozens of injured survivors were sent to Al-Ara Arab Hospital in Gaza City on Wednesday, where volunteer doctor Kamismith Elessi said bloody children were busy in the emergency room.
“It makes me want to cry,” Elessi, 56, said in a phone interview. “When I meet these kids, I imagine what would happen if they were mine. I don't care if the two parties are fighting each other or not, but the kids have nothing to do with it.”
He said many of the emergency rooms were being treated on the floor because the hospital didn't have free beds. Gaza's healthcare system is struggling to deal with the victims, especially after Israel blocked all humanitarian assistance from entering Gaza on March 2, which includes medical supplies and fuel.
Cryings and screams filled the hospital morgue, where the dead were laid out. One man cried as he clutched his son's body. His relatives had to pull him apart.
Gaza health officials say more than 50,000 have been killed since Israel began attacking Gaza in October 2023 in response to the deaths of more than 1,200 people who led Israel, which led Hamas-led Israel.
Israeli forces said Friday that its forces have begun operating in Shajaye to expand what the troops characterized as a buffer zone next to Israel's border with Gaza.
The military had ordered people to step up their ground campaign last week to leave parts of northern Gaza, but Obata said Israeli forces did not include streets that were attacked by evacuation zones.
Photos and videos verified by the New York Times show that the building levelled by the Israeli strike is just outside the evacuation zone. Israel says it will target Hamas wherever it believes there will be an armed group.
Many of the evacuation zones were in compliance with this order, but some chose to stay, but they said they could not face more radical changes after enduring displacement early in the war. Israel holds more and more territory, leaving Gazan with even fewer places.
Alaa Al-Sosi, 42, said she and her children must return to Shajaiye after fleeing the area on Wednesday. “There's no other place to stay,” she said.
During the first 15 months of the war, the battle between Israeli forces and Hamas reduced most of the Shajaye to wasteland. The unstable ceasefire suspended combat and allowed more humanitarian assistance to enter Gaza from January to March, but Israel renewed the airstrikes after the two sides were unable to reach an agreement to extend the truce.
Reported by Adam Rasgon, Abu Bakr Bashir, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad and Aric Toler.
