93 Palestinians killed in Israeli strike in north Gaza

Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed or are missing and dozens wounded in an Israeli strike on a residential building in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahia today, the Gaza Ministry of Health said according to Reuters.

Medics said at least 20 children were among the dead.

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

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

There was no immediate Israeli comment.

Video footage showed several bodies wrapped in blankets on the ground outside a bombed four-storey building. More bodies and survivors were being retrieved from under the wreckage as neighbours rushed to help with rescue.

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“There are tens of martyrs – tens of displaced people were living in this house. The house was bombed without prior warning. As you can see, martyrs are here and there, with body parts hanging on the walls,” Ismail Ouaida, a witness who was helping to recover bodies, said in the video.

Yesterday, the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said around 100,000 people were marooned in Jabalia, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun without medical or food supplies. The health ministry said on Tuesday those wounded in the strike could not receive care as doctors had been forced to evacuate the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital.

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

Gaza’s emergency service said its operations had come to a halt because of the three-week Israeli assault into northern Gaza.

Survivors said they had to dig with their hands to save those trapped under the rubble with some saying they were forced to use a Stanley knife to cut a lady’s legs as they were trapped under the rubble and she could not be moved.

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