UNRWA says Gaza has become a “graveyard” as Israel continues its bombing campaign amid deteriorating living conditions.
Ten family members, including seven children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the northern part of the country Gaza Stripthe Palestinian Civil Defense Rescue Organization reported.
A video the agency posted on its Telegram channel on Friday evening showed its staff rescuing victims from the rubble of the Khallah family home in Jabalia.
“All the martyrs come from the same family, including seven children, the eldest six years old,” civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal told AFP.
Basal added that 15 other people were injured in the airstrike.
The Israeli army told AFP it had attacked “several terrorists operating in a military structure of the Hamas terrorist organization and posing a threat to IDF forces operating in the region.”
“An initial investigation found that the reported number of casualties caused by the attack does not match information provided by the IDF,” it said.
Israel continued its attacks across the Gaza Strip on Friday, more than 14 months after its attack on Gaza.
According to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, at least eight people were killed by a drone missile that hit a residential building on the market street of Nuseirat refugee camp.
An airstrike on Beit Hanoon also killed four people, Al Jazeera correspondents said. The victims were two girls and their parents.
The bodies of three brothers were also recovered from the rubble of a bombed house near Kamal Adwan Hospital.
Trapped in a “cemetery”
Gaza has become a “graveyard” as heavy winter rains, hunger, terrible living conditions and ongoing hostilities continue to endanger lives, Louise Wateridge, senior emergency officer at UNRWA (the United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency), warned on Friday.
“An entire society here is now a cemetery… Over two million people are trapped,” she said from the Nuseirat camp.
“Under these conditions it is impossible for families to find shelter,” she said. “Most people live under tarpaulins, they don’t even have waterproof structures and 69 percent of the buildings here have been damaged or destroyed. There is absolutely no place for people to protect themselves from these elements.”
UNRWA provides assistance to nearly six million Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
Israeli politicians in October passed laws Prevent UNRWA from operating in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, while raising the prospect of similar action against other aid agencies.
Sweden announced plans on Friday to stop funding UNRWA in response to Israel’s ban, but pledged to double its aid to Gaza through other groups.
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said on X, formerly Twitter, that the Swedish government’s decision was “disappointing” and came at “the worst time for Palestine refugees.”
In a resolution adopted on Friday, the United Nations General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an opinion clarifying what international law says about Israel’s responsibility for the relief work of the United Nations, international organizations and third countries on Palestinian territory to allow.
The ICJ ruled at the beginning of the year ordered Israel will end its offensive in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, withdraw from the enclave and provide security and humanitarian access to the people of Gaza.
Israel has not complied.
These interim measures were part of a lawsuit filed by South Africa – later joined by several other countries – accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.
