Palestinians say Israel is decimating Gaza's Jabalia as world looks away

Israel says it is only targeting Hamas resistance fighters, but images and videos shared online by locals and Palestinian journalists often show many women and children among the victims. (Photo/AFP)

Israel has cut internet and sent another army unit to support its invading forces engaged in massacres in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza's eight historic refugee camps, where Palestinian residents saw Israeli tanks blowing up their houses and new Israeli massacre claiming lives of more than 30 civilians, 21 of them being women alone.

"What's happening in the Jabalia refugee camp can be summed up as a rapid extermination mission; we have never seen anything like this," Hossam Shabat, one of the few Palestinian journalists reporting from Jabalia, said on X on Friday.

In a subsequent post, he said, "it feels like Judgment Day."

"For the past hour, artillery shelling has been nonstop. Israeli occupation forces are demolishing houses while residents remain inside. The ongoing horrors include relentless bombing, continuous artillery fire, and snipers that kill anyone who moves," he wrote.

"What they are doing is extermination and an effort to empty the entire camp of its residents by killing and starving them."

Another Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif described the current scenes in Jabalia.

"Families who refused to be displaced are being subjected to genocide. Warplanes bombed dozens of inhabited homes in the vicinity of the Nassar intersection in the Tal al-Zaatar neighbourhood, east of the camp, resulting in 100 people being killed or wounded."

"The bodies of the pure are lying everywhere. Hospitals, streets, and roads are crowded with those who were recovered from them, and most are still under the rubble," he reported.

In customary statements, Israel says it is only targeting Hamas resistance fighters, but images and videos shared online by locals and Palestinian journalists often show many women and children among the victims.

Israel has barred foreign journalists from Gaza. And whatever reporting is done is led by Palestinian journalists, often at the risk of getting killed or maimed by Israeli shells or strikes.

Israel has so far killed nearly 200 Palestinian journalists for reporting its genocidal war in Gaza while pushing its own propaganda unabated through the obedient Israeli press as well as the complicit Western media outlets.

One of the 21 women killed tonight in Israeli attacks on Jabalia, Gaza, was Palestinian artist Mahasen Al Khatib.@MahasenAlkhatib
IG: mahasen_ktheeb

Just 13 hours before her death, the artist shared her work in memory of 19-year-old Sha’ban Al-Dalou, who was burned to death by… pic.twitter.com/XcXlzBzuBD
— Gaza Notifications (@gazanotice) October 18, 2024

New massacre

Later on Friday, Israel struck homes in Jabalia, killing at least 33 Palestinians, 21 of them women and many children, and wounding 85 others. Gaza officials said many of the wounded may not survive their injuries.

Residents in Jabalia and two nearby towns also said communications and internet services were cut off by Israel, disrupting rescue operations by ambulance teams and the ability of people affected by Israeli invasion to seek help.

Residents said Israeli forces had effectively isolated the far northern Gazan towns of Beit Hanoun, Jabalia, and Beit Lahiya from Gaza City, blocking movement except for those families heeding evacuation orders and leaving the three towns.

Also on Friday, health officials appealed for fuel, medical supplies and food to be sent immediately to three northern Gaza hospitals overwhelmed by the number of patients and wounded.

At the Kamal Adwan Hospital, medics had to replace children in intensive care with more critical cases of adults badly wounded by Israeli air strikes on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Jabalia on Thursday.

Israeli attack killed 28 people.

Kamal Adwan's director, Hussam Abu Safiya, said in a video sent to the media that the children had been moved to another division inside the facility, where they were being well taken care of.

Hospitals overwhelmed

Israel claimed it had sent in about 30 truck-loads of aid into northern Gaza on Friday including food, water, medical supplies, and shelter equipment, but locals and health officials said the aid has not been reaching the worst affected areas, including Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, said on X that the attack on the school was the third on an UNRWA facility this week, adding the agency had now lost a total of 231 team members in the past year of fighting.

Abu Safiya said medical staff were exhausted and that hospital supplies, including food, were being badly depleted.

Doctors at the Kamal Adwan, Al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals have refused to leave their patients despite Israeli ultimatums issued by the Israeli military at the start of its Jabalia invasion.

Northern Gaza, which had been home to well over half the territory's 2.4 million people, was bombed to rubble in the first phase of Israel's genocidal war on the territory a year ago.

Tel Aviv has killed more than 42,500 Palestinians and wounded nearly 100,000 since then. Some 10,000 Palestinians are feared buried under the rubble of their bombed homes. Another 10,000 have been abducted by Israel and dumped in Israeli jails and torture chambers.

Some experts and studies say this is just a tip of an iceberg and the actual Palestinian death toll could be around 200,000.

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Source: TRT