Israeli forces besieged hospitals and shelters for displaced people in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday as they stepped up their operations against Palestinian militants, residents and medics said.
Troops rounded up men and ordered women to leave the Jabilia historic refugee camp, they said. An Israeli air strike on a house in Jabilia killed five people and wounded several others, medics said.
The United Nations Palestinian refugee agency Unwra said Israeli authorities were preventing humanitarian missions from reaching areas in the north of the Palestinian enclave with critical supplies, including medicine and food.
“People attempting to flee are getting killed, their bodies left on the street,” Unwra head Philippe Lazzarini said on X.
Medics at the Indonesian Hospital told Reuters that Israeli troops stormed a school and detained the men before setting it ablaze. The fire reached hospital generators and caused a power outage, they added.
Health officials said they had refused orders by the Israeli army, which started a new incursion into the territory’s north over two weeks ago, to evacuate the three hospitals in the area.
Troops remained outside the hospital but did not enter, they said. Medics at a second hospital, Kamal Adwan, reported heavy Israeli fire near the hospital at night.
“The army is burning the schools next to the hospital, and no one can enter or leave the hospital,” said one nurse at the Indonesian Hospital, who asked not to be named.
Palestinian health officials said at least 18 people had been killed in Jabilia and eight elsewhere in Gaza in Israeli strikes.
The Israeli military said in a statement it was operating against “terrorists and terrorist infrastructure” in the Jabilia area.
Troops had helped thousands of civilians to evacuate safely through organised routes, it said. Israel was in contact with the international community and Gaza’s healthcare system to ensure hospital emergency services were operating, it said.
In the past day, troops had dismantled militant infrastructure and tunnel shafts and killed fighters in the Jabilia area, it said.
Israel has intensified its campaigns both in Gaza and Lebanon after the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar last week had raised hopes of an opening for ceasefire talks to end more than a year of conflict.
The UN Human Rights Office accused Israeli forces of unlawful interference with humanitarian assistance and issuing orders that were causing forced displacement. It said their conduct “may be causing the destruction of the Palestinian population in Gaza’s northernmost governate through death and displacement”.
Israel says it is getting large quantities of humanitarian supplies into Gaza with land deliveries and airdrops. It also says it has facilitated the evacuation of patients from the Kamal Adwan Hospital. Palestinians say no aid entered northern Gaza areas where the operation is active
Israeli officials said evacuation orders were aimed at separating Hamas fighters from civilians and denied there was any systematic plan to clear out civilians. It said forces operating in northern Gaza killed scores of Hamas gunmen and dismantled infrastructure
Hamas accused Israel of carrying out acts of “genocide and ethnic cleansing” to force people to leave northern Gaza.
Israeli strikes killed at least five people in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip and four in two separate strikes in Gaza City, medics said.
Sinwar was one of the masterminds of the October 7th, 2023, cross-border attack on Israeli communities that killed around 1,200 people, with about 253 more taken back to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent war has killed more than 42,500 Palestinians, with another 10,000 uncounted dead thought to lie under the rubble, Gaza health authorities say.
Meanwhile, Israel said its air force overnight attacked dozens of sites in Beirut and southern Lebanon used by Hizbullah to finance its operations, with reports that hundreds of Beirut residents fled their homes after multiple explosions in the Lebanese capital.
Israeli strikes late on Sunday hit several branches of a financial institution linked to Hizbullah in Beirut, Lebanon’s south and the Bekaa Valley.
An Israeli military spokesperson said earlier in a statement posted on social media platform X that it “will begin attacking infrastructure belonging to the Hizbullah Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association – get away from it immediately.”
Al-Qard al-Hassan – which the US has said is used by Iran-backed Hizbullah to manage its finances – has more than 30 branches across Lebanon including 15 in densely populated parts of central Beirut and its suburbs.
There was no immediate statement from the organisation, Hizbullah or the Lebanese government.
Cross-border fighting between Israel and Hizbullah erupted a year ago when the group began launching rockets in support of Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.
At the start of October, Israel launched a ground assault inside Lebanon in an attempt to stabilise the border region for its citizens who had fled rocket attacks in northern Israel.
Israeli police and the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency say they have arrested a network of Israeli citizens spying for Iran who allegedly provided information on military bases and conducted surveillance of individuals.
According to reports in the Israeli press, the suspects are accused of photographing and collecting information about Israeli bases and facilities, including the defence headquarters in Tel Aviv, known as the Kirya, and the Nevatim and Ramat David airbases.
At least two people were killed and three others injured on Monday in an apparent guided missile attack on a car in the heart of the Syrian capital, Damascus, Syrian state television said, quoting a military source who attributed the attack to Israel.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment.
– Reuters. Additional Reporting: Guardian