IRIA News

Israel conducted a series of targeted airstrikes at a residential bloc in Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza on October 31, 2023, killing dozens of innocent civilians. Israel claims that the airstrike targeted the Hamas command center that was set up in civilian houses.

Rescuers are pulling out bodies of women and children from the rubbles of the leveled apartment complex that was destroyed by a series of Israeli airstrikes. Photos from the destruction site showed several large craters, surrounded by shattered buildings.

Gaza authorities initially said 50 people were killed and 150 wounded. However, a nearby hospital said it received 400 casualties, including 120 dead. The director of the nearby hospital where casualties were taken, Dr. Atef Al-Kahlot, said hundreds of people were wounded or killed, but he did not provide exact figures. Based on the number of residents living in the complex, it can be deduced that the death would rise by at least dozens if not hundreds.

Israel defends attack

Israel aggressively defended the attack, saying that it was targeted at the Hamas. Israeli military spokesperson Jonathan Conricus said that dozens of Hamas militants and high-level officials and commanders were killed during the airstrike. It also said that the attack destroyed Hamas’ underground network of tunnels. 

Following the attack at the residential building in Jabalia, Israel’s military Chief Admiral Hagari once again called on all civilians in the camp and elsewhere in northern Gaza to move to areas south of the Wadi Gaza River for their safety. Hagari’s message indicates that Israel does not plan to hold down on its airstrikes on civilian targets any time soon. 

Hagari claimed that the strike killed a Hamas commander named Ibrahim Biari. According to him, Biari played an important role in the October 7 attack and had been involved in anti-Israeli attacks going back decades.

Hagari said that an underground Hamas installation beneath a targeted building collapsed. He blamed the collapse of the building on Hamas saying, “We don’t intend for the ground to collapse. But the issue is that Hamas built their tunnels there and that they’re running their operations from there.”

Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem denied the Israeli military’s claim, saying it was trying to justify “its heinous crime” against civilians.

‘It is time for war’ – Netanyahu 

Israeli forces have also intensified their ground operation in Gaza with more soldiers entering the northern part of the besieged city. Israel said two of its soldiers were killed in fighting in northern Gaza in the first military deaths reported since the start of the ground offensive. It also claimed that its ground forces had killed about 50 Hamas fighters during an operation to secure a military stronghold in western Jabalia. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed the growing international call for an immediate ceasefire saying that such action would constitute “surrender to terrorism”. Netanyahu declared that “this is a time for war”, as he hailed the rescue of a hostage as evidence that Israel’smilitary offensive could free Israeli captives while delivering crushing blows to Hamas.

Meanwhile, Hamas’s military wing said its fighters had hit four Israeli military vehicles within southern Gaza, fired at tanks and bulldozers in north-west Gaza, and ambushed an Israeli unit in the north-east.

Hamas and other military groups keep firing rockets into Israel. Yemen’s Houthi rebels have also joined attacks on Israel as they claimed for the first time carrying out drone attacks against Israel. The Houthis had been suspected of an attack earlier this month targeting Israel by sending missiles and drones over the Red Sea. However, a U.S. vessel deployed in the region intercepted the attack and destroyed the missiles.  

Humanitarian crisis worsens in Gaza

Thousands of civilians remain trapped in Gaza as Israeli forces continue their airstrike and ground operations in the besieged region. Thousands of crowded neighborhoods and hospitals lie in the way of the Israeli military force, which does not seem to bother the civilian casualties that may occur during the ground operation. Apart from warning the residents of northern Gaza and urging them to evacuate from their houses, the Israeli military has made no plans to ensure the safety of the civilians as well as the Israeli hostages captured by Hamas. 

Gaza’s humanitarian crisis continues to worsen. The World Health Organization said two hospitals were damaged and an ambulance was destroyed in Gaza over the last two days. It said all 13 hospitals operating in the north have received Israeli evacuation orders in recent days. Medics have refused such orders, saying it would be a death sentence for patients on life support.

The besieged city has been without water and electricity for weeks while Israel has barred fuel from entering Gaza. Hospitals are running out of equipment, medicine, as well as fuel to run operations. A very limited amount of food and water has been allowed to enter Gaza from Egypt. More than 2 million residents of Gaza remain on the brink of starvation and death as Israel continues its carpet bombing in the region.

UN officials have expressed grave concerns over the increasing number of casualties in Gaza, particularly among children. “More than 420 children are being killed or injured in Gaza each day — a number which should shake each of us to our core,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.

Gaza death toll

According to Gaza authorities, the lsraeli attacks have killed more than 8,500 Palestinians since October 7, 2023.

• 8,525 Palestinians killed.
• 3,542 children, 2,187 women and 130 medics among those killed.
• 1870 reported missing or under the rubble, including 1020 children.
• 21,500 injured.
• Half a million displaced.

UN human rights official quits over ”genocide” in Gaza

A United Nations human rights official has resigned over ”genocide” in Gaza which he said the UN has failed to stop. Craig Mokhiber, director of the UN’s New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a letter that “Once again we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes and the organization we serve appears powerless to stop it”.

Mokhiber, who lived in Gaza while working for the UN in the 1990s, accused the United States, the United Kingdom and European countries as “wholly complicit in the horrific assault”. He said Gaza is a ”textbook case of genocide” and that the U.S., UK and much of Europe were not only “refusing to meet their treaty obligations” under the Geneva Conventions but were also arming Israel’s assault and providing political and diplomatic cover for it.