Scores of Palestinians including many women and children have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on a crowded apartment building in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said 93 people had been killed and 40 were still missing, as emergency workers dug through the rubble looking for the dead and injured on Tuesday morning. Many of those present at the time of the attack were members of the extended Abu Nasr family.
Northern Gaza has been the focus of renewed heavy attacks by Israel in the past three weeks, targeting what it says are pockets of Hamas militants who have regrouped there. The violence and Israeli evacuation orders have displaced large numbers of Palestinians, though about 100,000 people have remained.
Marwan Al-Hams, an official at the Gaza health ministry, said 17 people were missing 150 wounded. Medical staff said 20 children had been killed.
The dead included a mother and her five children, some of them adults, and a second mother with her six children, according to an initial casualty list provided by the emergency services.
Video footage posted on social media showed bodies wrapped in carpets and blankets on the ground outside the building, while the sound of Israeli drones was audible above the site.
“There are tens of martyrs,” said Ismail Ouaida, an eyewitness who was helping to recover bodies. “Tens of displaced people were living in this house. The house was bombed without prior warning. As you can see, martyrs are here and there, with body parts hanging on the walls.”
Rabie al-Shandagly, 30, who had taken refuge in a nearby school, told Agence France-Presse: “The explosion happened at night and I first thought it was shelling, but when I went out after sunrise I saw people pulling bodies, limbs and the wounded from under the rubble. Most of the victims are women and children, and people are trying to save the injured, but there are no hospitals or proper medical care.”
Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the director of the nearby Kamal Adwan hospital, where a number of medics were detained during a raid by Israeli troops last week, said dozens of wounded people had arrived at the overwhelmed facility. He appealed to surgeons who had been ordered to evacuate by Israel to return to treat the injured.
“There is nothing left in the Kamal Adwan hospital except first aid materials,” Safia said in a voice message to journalists on Tuesday. “The healthcare system has completely collapsed.”. He said people who arrive wounded are dying because there is no care for them.
The Israel Defense Forces said they were looking into the reports of what had happened at the building.
The Israeli military has repeatedly struck shelters for displaced people in recent months, saying it carried out precise strikes targeting Palestinian militants and tried to avoid harming civilians. The strikes have often killed women and children.
The military said it detained scores of suspected Hamas militants in the raid on Kamal Adwan hospital, the latest in a series of raids on hospitals since the start of the war.
Israel has sharply restricted aid to the north this month, prompting a warning from the US that failure to facilitate greater humanitarian efforts could lead to a reduction in military aid.
Palestinians fear Israel is enacting a plan proposed by a group of former generals to order the civilian population of the north to evacuate, cut off aid supplies, and consider anyone who remains a militant.
The military has denied it is carrying out such a plan, while the government has not said clearly whether it is carrying out all or part of it.
Tuesday morning’s strike came hours after Israel’s parliament passed two laws that could prevent the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, the largest aid provider in Gaza, from operating in the Palestinian territories. It marks the culmination of a long-running campaign against Unrwa, which Israel contends has been infiltrated by Hamas, an allegation the agency denies.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on 7 October 2023, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. About 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead. In the year of conflict that has followed the Israeli military offensive in Gaza has killed 43,000 Palestinians.
Agencies contributed to this report