Israeli attack kills dozens of residents in northern Gaza housing block, US calls incident ‘horrific’

At least 93 Palestinians were killed or missing and dozens were injured in an Israeli attack on a residential building in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, the Gaza Health Ministry said, and the US called the incident “horrific.”

Doctors said at least 20 children were among the dead.

“A number of victims are still lying under rubble and on roads, and ambulance and civil protection teams cannot reach them,” the health ministry said in a statement.

Later on Tuesday, Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Gaza government’s media office, put the number of fatalities at 93.

There was no immediate Israeli comment. The Israeli military has regularly questioned death toll figures published by the Hamas-run media agency, saying they were often exaggerated.

Israel’s main ally, the United States, said it was concerned about the high number of casualties, with State Department spokesman Matthew Miller calling it a “horrific incident with a horrific outcome.”

U.S. officials have contacted the Israeli government to ask what happened, Miller told reporters, adding that he was aware of reports that many of the dead were children.

The UN Human Rights Office said it was “shocked” by one of the deadliest single attacks in almost three months and called for a swift, transparent investigation into the circumstances.

Video footage obtained by Reuters showed several bodies wrapped in blankets on the ground outside a bombed four-storey building. More bodies and survivors were pulled from the wreckage as neighbors rushed to help with the rescue.

“There are dozens of martyrs (dead) – dozens of displaced people lived in this house. The house was bombed without prior warning. As you can see, there are martyrs here and there, with body parts hanging on the walls,” Ismail Ouaida, a witness who helped recover bodies, said in the video.

Later on Tuesday, Palestinian health officials said several people were killed and injured in an Israeli airstrike that hit three houses in Beit Lahiya.

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On Monday, the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said around 100,000 people were trapped in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun without medical or food supplies. Reuters could not independently verify the number.

The Health Ministry said on Tuesday that those injured in the strike in Beit Lahiya could not receive care as doctors were forced to evacuate the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital.

“Critical cases without intervention will succumb to their fate and die,” the ministry said in a statement.

Gaza’s emergency service said its operations had come to a standstill due to the three-week Israeli assault on northern Gaza. Israel says its campaign is aimed at destroying the Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose fighters had regrouped during the years-long war in the area.

Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 left 1,200 people dead and more than 250 hostages captured and taken to Gaza, according to Israeli figures.

The death toll from Israel’s air and ground strikes in Gaza has surpassed 43,000, Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Monday.

The war in Gaza has sparked a wider conflict in the Middle East, with Israel bombing Lebanon and sending troops south to eliminate Iran-backed Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas.

Tuesday’s strike came a day after Israel’s parliament passed a law banning the UN aid agency UNRWA from operating in the country. This alarmed some of Israel’s Western allies, who fear it will worsen the already poor humanitarian situation in Gaza.

Israeli officials cited the involvement of a handful of thousands of staffers from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the October 7, 2023, attack and the membership of some staffers from Hamas and other armed groups.

UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini described the measure as “collective punishment”.

It was still unclear how the decision will affect the lives of Palestinians, especially in the Gaza Strip, where the United Nations says most of the 2.3 million people have been internally displaced since the war broke out more than a year ago.