In a statement on Sunday, Ismail Thawebta, director of the Government Media Office in Gaza, warned that Israel aims to carry out a mass displacement from north Gaza, calling it the "largest and most dangerous U.S.-Israeli plan of the 21st century."
He added that Israeli forces are blocking fuel supplies from reaching hospitals in northern Gaza, further endangering lives, according to the statement.
Thawebta emphasized that the forced displacement of Palestinians from northern Gaza is part of a US-Israeli scheme, accusing Israel and the US of waging a "criminal war of extermination” against the Palestinian people.
Israeli occupation forces widened their raid into northern Gaza, with tanks advancing deeper into the north edge of Gaza City. The Israeli forces pounded some districts of the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood, residents said, forcing many families to leave their homes, Reuters reported.
Residents added that Israeli forces have effectively isolated Beit Hanoun, Jabalia, and Beit Lahiya in the far north of the territory from Gaza City.
Access between the two areas is now blocked except upon their permission for families willing to leave the three towns, heeding evacuation orders, according to Reuters.
Bodies Rot in Streets
Israel has ordered the full evacuation of northern Gaza, including Gaza City as it renewed its offensive in northern Gaza and pushed for the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people from the area.
An estimated 400,000 people remain in the north after a mass evacuation ordered in the opening weeks of the war. Many Jabalia residents have taken to social media platforms: “We will not leave, we die, and we don’t leave.”
The Palestinians fear Israel intends to permanently depopulate the north to establish army bases or Jewish settlements there, AP reported.
The UN’s World Food Programme says no food has entered the northern Gaza Strip this month as Israeli attacks continue. It says “the risk of famine is real” for about 400,000 Palestinians trapped there.
Dr. Mohamed Salha, director of Al Awda Hospital, said it was among three hospitals in the north that had received small shipments of fuel that would last for a matter of days.
He told AP they also need medical supplies as casualties continue to stream in, requiring 12 to 15 surgeries each day at his facility alone.
Fares Abu Hamza, an official with the Gaza Health Ministry’s emergency service, said there are a “large number of martyrs” still uncollected from the streets and under the rubble.
“We are unable to reach them,” he told The Associated Press, adding that street dogs are eating some of the remains.
Unspeakable Cruelty, Sadism
Israeli forces are committing “another massacre” in northern Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, the UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territory said.
Francesca Albanese said Palestinian civilians in Jabalia “are killed – both in groups and one by one – amid unspeakable cruelty and sadism” by Israeli troops.
The Israeli troops “have accepted to be ‘willing executioners’ of a genocidal plan,” Albanese added, noting that the Israeli attacks are being conducted with Western support and weapons.
“It blows my mind to think that WE KNOW what Israel is doing and altogether we cannot stop it. Looking at where we were 100 years ago, not much progress has been achieved,” she said in a post on X.
Israel has killed at least 42,227 Palestinians, mostly children and women, and wounded 98,464 in its war on the Gaza Strip since October 2023.
In the past 24 hours, Israeli attacks killed at least 52 people and injured 128 others, the ministry added.
A Genocide in North Gaza
Hamas group condemned the continued Israeli war, siege, and escalating bombardment against unarmed civilians in northern Gaza as a "full-scale genocide."
“Occupation’s fascist government is committing this crime without regard for international laws or obligations, and with criminal US cover,” Hamas said in a statement.
“The international silence on this genocide that has been ongoing for more than a year constitutes a license for the occupation government to continue it, escalate it, and expand it to include the countries of the region”, the statement read.
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