At least 50 people were reported to have been killed in an Israeli air strike on the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday.
The strike, which left a huge crater, occurred amid fierce clashes as Israeli forces continued to widen their push into the coastal enclave.
Israel said a senior Hamas commander was killed in the strike along with “numerous terrorists”, and that it had also causedthe collapse of Hamas tunnels and the buildings above them.
But the attack was condemned by the Palestinian Authority, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, as well as by Egypt, which described it as “inhumane” and a “blatant violation of international law”. In response to the attack‚ Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party declared a day of rage on Wednesday in the West Bank.
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Israel said two of its soldiers were killed in Gaza on Tuesday as defence minister Yoav Gallant confirmed that the Israel Defence Forces were operating “on a large scale, deep in the Gaza Strip”.
The intensifying ground operation comes as Israel continues the heavy bombardment of Gaza launched in the wake of the October 7th attack by Hamas, the militant body that governs the Gaza Strip, in which 1,400 people in Israel, most of them civilians, were killed.
More than 8,500 residents of Gaza have been killed in the Israeli attacks that followed, including almost 3,500 children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday he was “deeply alarmed” by the intensification of the conflict. “This includes the expansion of ground operations by the Israel Defence Forces accompanied by intense air strikes, and the continued rocket fire towards Israel from Gaza,” he said. He repeated his call for a ceasefire.
Eighty lorries filled with medical equipment, food and water crossed into the Gaza Strip via the Egyptian border on Tuesday – the largest daily delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza during the 25-day war.
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Israel and the US have agreed that 100 lorries a day will cross into Gaza in the coming days , although this figure is still significantly lower than the 500 trucks that entered the coastal enclave every day prior to the war.
It is estimated that more than 800,000 residents of northern Gaza have fled their homes for the south in an effort to escape the worst of the fighting.
A World Health Organisation official warned that a “public health catastrophe” was imminent in Gaza amid overcrowding, mass displacement and damage to water and sanitation infrastructure. The UN children’s agency, Unicef, warned of the risk of infant deaths due to dehydration, with just 5 per cent of normal water supplies available.
