DEIR AL-BALAH (TIP): Gaza’s civil defence agency said on October 27 that an overnight Israeli air strike killed 93 people in a residential building in the northern district of Beit Lahia.
“The number of martyrs in the massacre of the Abu Nasr family home in Beit Lahia has risen to 93 martyrs, and about 40 are still missing under the rubble,” agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP in an updated toll. “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,” said Rabie al-Shandagly, 30, who had taken refuge in a nearby school in Beit Lahia.
“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,” he told AFP.
On Tuesday, Palestinians searched through the rubble of the building and removed the dead, while others mourned over the bodies of relatives.
The bodies of 15 people killed in the strike were brought to Kamal Adwan Hospital, its director Hussam Abu Safia told AFP.
“We are still receiving a number of martyrs and wounded,” Safia said, adding that the hospital was struggling to treat patients due to a lack of staff and medicines.
“There is nothing left in the Kamal Adwan Hospital except first aid materials after the army arrested our medical team and workers when they invaded the hospital during the military operation in Jabalia,” Safia said.The ministry’s emergency service said another 20 people were wounded in the strike in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, near the Israeli border.
The army also detained hundreds of Palestinians from the hospital including health care workers, patients and others who had sought shelter in the facility.
The Israeli military has repeatedly struck shelters for displaced people in recent months, claiming it were precise strikes targeting Palestinian militants.
Israel‘s latest major operation in northern Gaza, focused on the Jabaliya refugee camp, has killed hundreds of people and driven tens of thousands from their homes in another wave of mass displacement with many international organisations and countries terming it as an “ethnic cleansing.”
More than 770 people have been killed by Israel in northern Gaza in just 19 days, according to Palestinian officials. (AFP)