• Strikes kill 19, wound several others in Gaza, Lebanon
• Troops round up men, order women to leave refugee camp
• Hezbollah targets Israeli troops in border village

CAIRO: Israeli forces besieged hospitals and shelters for displaced people in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday as they stepped up their operations against Palestinian fighters, residents and medics said.

Troops rounded up men and ordered women to leave the Jabalia historic refugee camp, they said. An Israeli airstrike on a house in Jabalia killed five people and wounded several others, medics said.

The UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA said Israeli authorities were preventing humanitarian missions from reaching areas in the north of the Palestinian enclave with critical supplies, including medicine and food.

“People attempting to flee are getting killed, their bodies left on the street,” UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini said on X.

Medics at the Indonesian Hospital told Reuters that Israeli troops stormed a school and detained the men before setting it ablaze. The fire reached hospital generators and caused a power outage, they added.

Health officials said they had refused orders by the Israeli army, which started a new incursion into the territory’s north over two weeks ago, to evacuate the three hospitals in the area or leave the patients unattended.

Troops remained outside the hospital but did not enter, they said. Medics at a second hospital, Kamal Adwan, reported heavy Israeli fire near the hospital at night.

“The army is burning the schools next to the hospital, and no one can enter or leave the hospital,” said one nurse at the Indonesian Hospital, who asked not to be named.

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Palestinian health officials said at least 18 people had been killed in Jabalia and eight elsewhere in Gaza in Israeli strikes.

More than 1.9 million people have been left destitute and desperate for food.

“We are facing death by bombs, by thirst and hunger,” said Raed, a resident of Jabalia camp. “Jabalia is being wiped out and there is no witness to the crime, the world is blinding its eyes.”

Hadeel Obeid, a supervisor nurse at the Indonesian hospital, said they were running out of medical supplies, including sterile gauze and medications. The water supply has been cut off and there was no food for the fourth consecutive day, she told Reuters.

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The United Nations said it had been unable to reach the three hospitals in northern Gaza. The UN Human Rights Office accused Israeli forces of unlawful interference with humanitarian assistance and issuing orders causing forced displacement. It said their conduct “may be causing the destruction of the Palestinian population in Gaza’s northernmost governate through death and displacement”.

UNRWA’s Lazzarini said injured people were lying without care in hospitals that had been hit.

“UNRWA remaining shelters are so overcrowded, some displaced people are now forced to live in the toilets,” he said.

14 killed in Lebanon strikes

Lebanon said an Israeli strike on the main eastern city of Baalbek killed six people including a child, on Monday, with state media reporting it hit a building in a densely-packed residential area.

“The Israeli enemy strike… in Baalbek killed six people, including a child,” the Lebanese health ministry said, and the state-run National News Agency reported that all six were from the same family.

The ministry also said four rescuers were killed in Israeli strikes “targeting rescue teams” in the country’s war-torn south in the past 24 hours. “Israeli enemy strikes in the past 24 hours targeted rescue teams, leading to the following bloody toll,” the ministry said in a statement.

Meanwhile, a child and three adults were killed and 24 others wounded on Monday night in an Israeli strike near the Lebanese capital Beirut’s main government hospital, the national health ministry said in a statement.

Israel’s campaign in Lebanon has displaced more than 1.2 million people multiple times, according to Lebanese authorities. Israel says its aim is to drive Hezbollah fighters from the border region so tens of thousands of Israelis can return to homes they were forced to flee over the past year due to Hezbollah cross-border fire in solidarity with Palestinians during the war in Gaza.

Hezbollah said it fired at Israeli soldiers located near the municipal building in a south Lebanon border village, where state media earlier said the group clashed with troops who blew up houses.

Hezbollah fighters launched “a rocket salvo” at “Israeli enemy soldiers near the municipality of Aita al-Shaab,” Hezbollah said in a statement.

Hezbollah said it repeatedly targeted Israeli troops in south Lebanon border villages over several hours, including Markaba and Kfar Kila, more than 20km from Aita al-Shaab.

Published in Dawn, October 22nd, 2024