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Palestinians say rockets fired by Israel hit a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip
Item information
- Author: Rushdi Abualouf in AlMaghazi camp in Gaza and Kathryn Armstrong in London
- Scroll, BBC News
November 5, 2023
The Hamasrun Health Ministry said at least 45 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the AlMaghazi refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military says it is investigating whether it conducted any operations in the area at the time.
The small camp is overcrowded with people fleeing bombings further north.
Rescue teams are struggling to find those still missing. It is estimated that more than 100 people were there at the time of the bombing.
The head of AlAqsa Hospital in Gaza said that the explosion on Saturday evening (4/11) killed 52 people, slightly more than the figure published by the Ministry of Health.
During a televised address, Netanyahu said he would not agree to this until hostages captured by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel were released.
Residents have dug through the rubble and layers of cement with their bare hands to free trapped people.
Photojournalist Muhammad AlAlul lost his wife and four of his five children in the attack. He was working somewhere else when the explosion happened.
“I didn’t think my children could be buried under the rubble,” he told the BBC.
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People use their bare hands to clear debris and try to rescue people trapped after an attack
“I wish I had been with them and killed with them.”
The BBC asked the Israeli military for comment on the incident. Although there has been no official response yet, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman told the BBC that they could not confirm whether the camp was hit by an Israeli airstrike.
In an interview with the BBC World Service’s Newshour, Lt. Col. Peter Lerner added that all attacks in southern Gaza were “specifically and intelligenceled against terrorist elements.”
Lerner said that doesn’t mean that “unfortunately there can’t be deaths.”
The AlMaghazi camp is in the area where Israel has advised people in the northern Gaza Strip to seek safety as they continue their campaign to destroy Hamas in retaliation for the October 7 attacks on Israel.
However, the air raids in the south did not stop.
“There is no safe place in Gaza,” Muhammad, a civil defense officer who rushed to the site of the attack on Saturday to help, told the BBC.
“They are calling on Palestinians to go south, but they are killing them everywhere on the streets, in schools where people seek refuge, and even in hospitals.”
According to the Hamasrun Ministry of Health, the death toll in Gaza since October 7 is now over 9,700.
Hamas attacks on Israel killed more than 1,400 people and took more than 200 people hostage.
Stop fire
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said an Israeli ceasefire in Gaza would allow Hamas to regroup and carry out new attacks.
However, he added that Israel must take “all possible measures” to prevent civilian deaths in the enclave.
Blinken made the comments in Jordan on Saturday after meeting with Arab leaders who are calling for an immediate cessation of fighting.
They accused Israel of committing war crimes.
“We do not accept that this is selfdefense,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said at a news conference with Blinken after the talks, which also included Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
The US continues to support Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas.
Safadi described the conflict as a “violent war that kills civilians, destroys their homes, their hospitals, their schools, their mosques and their churches.”
“It cannot be justified under any pretext and it will not bring security to Israel, it will not bring peace to the region.”