Israeli strikes have killed at least 20 Palestinians, including children, in Gaza on New Year’s Day, after makeshift shelters for displaced people across the Strip were flooded after days of heavy rain.
Attacks were reported on Wednesday in Jabalia in northern Gaza, the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza and the southern town of Khan Younis.
Gaza’s health ministry said four children and a woman were among the dead. At least 10 more Palestinians are missing and believed to be under the rubble.
“Fifteen people were martyred and more than 20 were wounded in a massacre after midnight in a house where displaced people lived in Jabalia city,” said the spokesman for Gaza’s civil defense agency, Mahmoud Basal.
A relative of some of the victims said first responders were still searching for survivors. “The house has turned into a pile of rubble,” Jibri Abu Warda said.
“It was a massacre with body parts of children and women scattered everywhere. They were sleeping when the house was bombed,” said Abu Warda. “No one knows why they targeted the house. They were all civilians.”
An overnight attack on the Bureij refugee camp killed a woman and a child, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which received the bodies.
A third attack in Khan Younis killed three people, according to Nasser Hospital and European Hospital, which received the bodies.
The civil defense agency said it had found it difficult to respond to distress calls from families due to intense Israeli bombardment in recent days.
“The besieged in the incursion areas suffer from a complete lack of means of living. The suspension of our services has completely affected the lives of citizens who are exposed to Israeli bombardment,” a member of the civil defense told Al Jazeera.
“The New Year arrives in Gaza, not with joy or hope, but with the boom of warplanes, drones and the eardrum-shattering sounds of explosions,” Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said, reporting from Deir el-Balah in Gaza. central.
Israel’s war in Gaza has killed at least 45,553 Palestinians and wounded 108,379 since October 7, 2023, Gaza’s Ministry of Health said Wednesday.
“It is not only the Israeli bombs and forced displacement that are taking over the Palestinians, but also the harsh cold weather. Many of them are in tents, without warm winter clothing and are trying to cope with it all using primitive means of heating,” said Abu Azzoum.
Days of heavy rain have flooded hundreds of makeshift shelters across the enclave, heaping more misery on forcibly displaced Palestinians as Israel continues to restrict the flow of humanitarian aid. At least six babies have died from the cold in recent days.
“For three days, we have not slept for fear that our children will get sick because of the winter, as well as for fear that rockets will fall on us,” said Samah Darabieh, a displaced woman from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza and now lives in Beit Lahiya.
Throughout their 15-month offensive in Gaza, Israeli forces have routinely surrounded and attacked medical facilities housing displaced patients and families.
“Two days ago, they bombed Al-Wafaa hospital, which is behind us, and shrapnel fell here,” Darabieh said.
Last week, Israeli forces raided the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, forcibly evacuating medical staff and patients from the facility and arresting the hospital’s director, Dr Hussam Abu Safia, whose whereabouts remain unknown.
Kamal Adwan Hospital “is suffering from a suffocating siege, as the operation and surgery departments, laboratory, maintenance, ambulance units and warehouses have been completely burned,” the Gaza Ministry of Health said.
The United Nations has said Israel’s attacks on Gaza’s hospitals have pushed its health care system to the “brink of total collapse” and Israeli justifications that Palestinian armed groups use health facilities are “vague, broad” and ” contradicted by publicly available information”.
Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza has drawn growing international condemnation, with officials and rights groups labeling the attacks and the blockade of aid shipments acts of genocide.
In November, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice over its deadly war in Gaza.
