Gaza and Jerusalem CNN –
Israel bombed the densely populated Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza for the second time in two days on Wednesday, sparking warnings of war crimes as more nations took diplomatic action and condemned Israel’s offensive in the besieged enclave.
According to the hospital’s director, Israeli airstrikes also hit the area surrounding Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City, where doctors say up to 14,000 displaced people are seeking refuge. The strikes, which began on Wednesday evening, continued into Thursday morning and moved “closer and closer to the hospital,” said Dr. Bashar Mourad told CNN on the phone.
More civilians are expected to leave Gaza on Thursday, a day after injured Palestinians and hundreds of foreign nationals crossed from Gaza into Egypt through the Rafah border crossing in the first sanctioned exodus in weeks.
A Palestinian official at the Rafah border crossing, Wael Abu Umar, told CNN that 400 foreign nationals would leave without specifying their nationality, as well as 60 others injured. CNN spoke to six Americans who crossed the border on Thursday.
Egypt is preparing to facilitate the evacuation of nearly 7,000 foreign citizens from more than 60 countries in the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing, the country’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
The massive second attack on Jabalya caused further catastrophic damage, destroying several buildings in the Fallujah district of the camp. Videos from the site showed a deep crater and people searching for bodies in the rubble.
Civil defense in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip described the attack as a “second massacre.” According to Dr. Atef Al Kahlout, director of the Indonesian hospital in Gaza, said the airstrike killed at least 80 people and injured hundreds more. He told CNN that more bodies were being recovered from the rubble and the majority of victims were women and children.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Wednesday’s attack targeted a Hamas command and control complex and eliminated Hamas terrorists “based on precise intelligence.”
“Hamas is deliberately building its terrorist infrastructure under, around and in civilian buildings, thereby deliberately endangering the civilian population in the Gaza Strip,” the IDF added in a statement.
The airstrike came a day after Israeli fighter jets attacked the camp in an area near Fallujah on Tuesday, killing or wounding hundreds of people, according to medics, and sparking renewed outcry over the rising number of civilian casualties in Gaza.
Survivors and eyewitnesses spoke of apocalyptic scenes after Tuesday’s strike. One eyewitness said: “It felt like the end of the world.”
Ali Jadallah/Anadolu/Getty Images
A man sits on rubble as Palestinians conduct a search and rescue operation after the second bombing of the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza City on November 1.
“Children carried other injured children and ran while gray dust hung in the air. Bodies hung on the rubble, many of them unrecognizable. Some were bleeding and others were burned,” Mohammad Al Aswad told CNN by phone.
The IDF said the first attack killed several Hamas members, including Ibrahim Biari, whom it described as one of the Hamas commanders responsible for the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed more than 1,400 people and hundreds were taken hostage. However, Hamas strongly denied the presence of any of its leaders in the refugee camp.
The United Nations human rights office said on social media that the attacks on Jabalya, Gaza’s largest refugee camp, “could amount to war crimes” given “the high number of civilian casualties and the scale of destruction.”
At least 8,700 people have died in the weeks-long Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah, which comes from sources in the Hamas-controlled enclave. On average, more than 300 people die per day, according to CNN’s analysis. More than 70% of those killed were women, children and the elderly, the ministry said on Monday.
The devastation caused by the attacks, part of Israel’s expanded offensive in the Gaza Strip, appeared to be a turning point in the war for a number of countries, which responded with diplomatic measures condemning Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip and the resulting humanitarian crisis.
Jordan on Wednesday became the latest country, after Chile and Colombia, to recall its ambassador to Israel due to the attacks on Gaza. Bolivia severed diplomatic relations with Israel on Tuesday, citing “crimes against humanity committed against the Palestinian people.”
The strikes continue despite increasing urgency from the United Nations and aid groups for a ceasefire and despite a non-binding UN General Assembly resolution backed by over 100 countries calling for a “permanent humanitarian ceasefire.”
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A spate of new explosions was seen over Gaza City – the enclave’s largest urban center – in the early hours of Thursday, a live camera feed from AFP showed.
IDF commander Brigadier General Itzik Cohen said on Wednesday that the Israeli military was “at the gates of Gaza City.” And IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari claimed that Israeli forces had broken through Hamas’ defense line in the northern Gaza Strip and were expanding their fighting into the Gaza Strip.
On Thursday, the IDF announced the death of a soldier killed as part of the country’s invasion of Gaza, bringing the total number of Israeli soldiers killed as part of the Gaza operation to 18.
The scale of the tragedy for the more than two million people, half of them children, trapped in the war-torn enclave is “unprecedented,” the head of the United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency said after a brief trip to Gaza on Wednesday.
“Everyone just asked for water and food. Instead of being at school and studying, the children asked for a drink of water and a piece of bread. It was heartbreaking. Above all, people demanded a ceasefire. They want this tragedy to end,” said Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, almost half of all hospitals in Gaza are out of service due to bombings and fuel shortages, including the leading cancer hospital in Gaza. It warned that Gaza’s largest hospital, Al Shifa, would be forced to cease operations in less than a day.
Meanwhile, the main generator at the Gaza Indonesian Hospital – one of the few remaining hospitals serving the northern part of the coastal enclave – went offline on Wednesday evening, Dr. Atef Al Kahlout, the hospital’s director, told CNN on Thursday, deepening fears for patients in the intensive care unit. The hospital is considered the backbone of health care in northern Gaza and the outage has affected ventilation systems in operating rooms, the hospital’s only oxygen station and refrigerators in the hospital’s morgue, Al Kahlout said.
Hatem Ali/AP
Palestinians cross the Gaza Strip border crossing in Rafah to the Egyptian side on November 1, 2023.
On Wednesday, injured Palestinians and hundreds of foreign nationals began crossing from Gaza into Egypt through the Rafah border crossing.
They included more than 360 foreign passport holders, many of them dual Palestinian citizens, and dozens were headed to Cairo, from where some will take a flight back to their home countries, an Egyptian government official told CNN.
Among those who entered Egypt on Wednesday was 71-year-old Ramona Okumura of Seattle, an American volunteer who worked with amputee children in the Gaza Strip. Her niece Leah Okumura told CNN that Ramona is now resting in a hotel.
Additionally, 45 injured Palestinians are currently being treated in three hospitals across Egypt, an Egyptian government official told CNN. They are among a list of 81 seriously injured people who are expected to travel to Egypt for treatment.
On Wednesday, 55 trucks carrying humanitarian aid from the Egyptian Red Crescent were on their way to Gaza through the Rafah border crossing, carrying food, water, medicine and medical supplies. A total of 272 aid trucks have reached Gaza so far – a drop in the ocean of needed aid – but no fuel has been allowed, it said.
This story is evolving and will be updated.