“As the world celebrates the new year, we welcome 2025 with the first Israeli massacre in the Gaza Strip,” laments Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal.
The clock had barely struck midnight when an Israeli strike on a house in Jabalia, in the north of the Gaza Strip, left, according to him, 15 people dead and more than 20 injured among three displaced families, the Badra. , Abou Warda and Taroush.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army did not immediately comment.
“The house was completely destroyed by two missiles fired by a fighter plane. Several people are still under the rubble,” said a rescuer, Mohammad, who did not give his last name.
“It’s a massacre, children and women are in pieces. Nobody knows why the house was targeted, there were only civilians,” testifies Jibril Abou Warda, 35, close to several of the victims.
Images show tearful women in front of bodies lined up on the ground, including those of children, before they are wrapped in white sheets.
“We don’t want humanitarian aid, we want the war to stop. Enough bloodshed! Enough!” says another bereaved relative, Khalil Abou Warda, as people behind him continue to search the rubble of the house.
Gazan emergency services indicated during the day that ten other Palestinians had died in two separate Israeli strikes in Khan Younes in the south and in Gaza City (north).
Flooded tents
Since October 6, the Israeli army has been carrying out an intense land and air offensive in the north of the Palestinian territory, particularly in Jabalia, in order to prevent fighters of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas from regrouping there.
Manal Lubbad, a mother of eight and a displaced woman from Gaza City, tries to clean her flooded tent after heavy rains in the refugee camp in Deir al-Balah. (Abdel Kareem Hana/Associated Press)
“There is nothing around me but ruins and desolation. People no longer know what to do or where to go. They don’t know how to survive,” says UN humanitarian official Jonathan Whittal in a video after having managed to get there.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced in the Palestinian coastal strip since the start of the war and are often reduced to living in makeshift tents unsuitable for winter conditions.
“More than 1,500 tents sheltering displaced people have been flooded in camps across Gaza,” warns Gaza Civil Defense after a wave of bad weather in recent days.
“We haven’t slept for three days for fear that our children will get sick because of the winter, but also that missiles will fall on us,” says Samah Darabieh, who lives in the Beit Lahia camp in the north. from Gaza.
The Israeli body overseeing civil affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Cogat) said on Wednesday that 55 patients, the majority of them children, had been evacuated from the Palestinian territory, along with 72 accompanying people, for treatment in the United Arab Emirates.
“More than 12,000 patients still need medical evacuation out of Gaza,” underlines the World Health Organization, which is participating in this operation.
The war in Gaza was triggered by an unprecedented attack by Hamas in Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, the majority civilians, according to a count based on official Israeli figures and including dead or dead hostages. killed in captivity in Gaza.
At least 45,553 people were killed in the Israeli military campaign of retaliation in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to a latest report on Wednesday from the Hamas Ministry of Health, whose data is considered reliable by the UN.
