UPDATE ON THE SITUATION – A house, hit shortly after midnight, sheltered three families displaced by the fighting.
The Civil Defense of the Gaza Strip announced this Wednesday 1is January that 15 people were killed overnight in an Israeli strike on a house in Jabalia, in the north of the Palestinian territory devastated by more than a year of war. “As the world celebrates the new year, we welcome 2025 with the first Israeli massacre in the Gaza Strip, in Jabalia”Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal told AFP, reporting an assessment of “15 dead and more than 20 injured”.
According to him, the house, hit shortly after midnight, sheltered three families displaced due to the fighting, Badra, Abou Warda and Taroush. Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army did not immediately comment. Since October 6, it has been leading an intense land and air offensive in northern Gaza, particularly in Jabalia, in order to prevent, according to it, fighters of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas from regrouping there.
More than 1,500 tents flooded
After more than 14 months of war, the humanitarian situation is critical in the Palestinian coastal strip, where hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced by the fighting, often reduced to sheltering in tents in the middle of winter. “More than 1,500 tents sheltering displaced people have been flooded in camps across Gaza”alerted Civil Defense on Wednesday after a wave of bad weather in recent days.
The war in Gaza was triggered by the unprecedented attack by Hamas in Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people on the Israeli side, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official figures. Israelis and including hostages who died or were killed in captivity in the Gaza Strip. More than 45,500 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli military campaign of retaliation in the Palestinian territory, the majority civilians, according to data from the Health Ministry of the Hamas government for Gaza, deemed reliable by the UN.
