Israel bombs northern Gaza house killing 13 children amid ongoing siege

An Israeli strike on a house in the Jabalia refugee camp sheltering displaced Palestinians has killed at least 32 people, including 13 children, as rights groups warn of an “extremely grave situation” in northern Gaza amid weeks of ongoing military siege.

“We now have a confirmed report that everybody in that house was killed. The last few remains were removed from under the rubble in the past couple of hours,” Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said, adding that the strike took place at 6am.

Mahmoud said the attack took place “all of a sudden and without any prior warning”. According to a witness, the house was full of women and children who had been displaced from different parts of northern Gaza and had ended up in this particular building.

“This is not about disarming certain groups but it’s about a systematic destruction of an entire area and turning it into more of a wasteland,” the Al Jazeera correspondent said, referring to the widespread destruction of northern Gaza due to nonstop Israeli bombardment and a military siege imposed on October 6.

In a separate attack in Gaza City, an Israeli air strike on a house in the Sabra neighbourhood killed Wael al-Khour, an official at the Welfare Ministry, and seven other members of his family, including his wife and children, medics and relatives said.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza said more than 50 people were killed in total and 164 injured in three attacks across Gaza on Sunday.

Israel has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians since it launched its devastating war on Gaza in the wake of an October 7, 2023 Hamas attack that killed more than 1,100 people and about 250 others were taken captive.

The UN human rights office (OHCHR) said on Friday women and children comprise nearly 70 percent of the thousands of Palestinian deaths it had managed to verify.

Military siege for weeks

For the past 36 days, Israeli forces have laid siege in areas in northern Gaza, including Jabalia and Beit Lahiya, choking the entry of already scarce humanitarian supplies.

Mahmoud Alsaqqa, OXFAM’s food security and livelihood lead in Gaza, said the “extremely grave situation” in the Strip is deteriorating further. This comes following a warning by the Committee of Global Experts that famine is imminent in northern Gaza and action is needed within days to avert a catastrophe.

“Those residing in northern Gaza are left without any essentials for survival,” Alsaqqa told Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah, as no aid or food supplies have entered the north for more than a month except for a small amount of medical supplies.

“The average number of trucks coming in now is below 50. We used to have 500 trucks per day [before October 7, 2023], so you can imagine the huge needs people have compared to what’s coming in,” he said.

Along with stepping up the bombardment, the Israeli army has issued new waves of forced displacement orders for residents in the north, driving people to be displaced internally from the north.

Still, many have refused to leave despite the catastrophic humanitarian conditions and the near-daily shelling. Many of them told Al Jazeera that they fear leaving the area because of the risk of being attacked by Israeli soldiers.

The Israeli daily Haaretz accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the military of “conducting an ethnic cleansing operation in the northern Gaza Strip”.

“The few Palestinians remaining in the area are being forcibly evacuated, homes and infrastructure have been destroyed, and wide roads in the area are being built and completing the separation of the communities in the northern Strip from the center of Gaza City,” it wrote in an editorial.

As of November 4, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that about 100,000 people had been displaced over four weeks from the North Gaza governorate to Gaza City. Up to 95,000 people remained in North Gaza, OCHA said.

The Israeli army says it wants to prevent the regrouping of Hamas fighters there. Yet, the depopulation of the northern part of the enclave and the widespread destruction have stoked fears of war crimes.

On Thursday, the Israeli military sought to distance itself from comments made last week by an Israeli commander, who said Israel was closer to “the complete evacuation” of the north and that residents from there would not be allowed back once the fighting was over.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies