A medical source reported that four people were killed and others injured in the Israeli bombing east of the Tuffah neighbourhood, Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
Meanwhile, two civilians were killed and others injured in a bombing of the Mansour warehouses area in the Beit Lahia project in northern Gaza, where Israel continues to fire its machine guns at homes in the Al-Fakhoura area.
The occupation's warplanes also continue to intensively fire on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, which has been subject to a tight siege, killing, and unprecedented destruction for 17 days.
In the north also, three citizens, two children with their mother, were killed and six others injured in an Israeli missile strike that targeted the Halawa family home in the Zarqa area.
Two other Palestinians were killed when the Israeli forces targeted a civilian vehicle on Salah Al-Din Street, south of Deir Al-Balah, in central Gaza.
Israel has forced thousands of Palestinians to evacuate the area, while the Israeli army has shared propaganda footage showing its soldiers distributing water and candies to the displaced.
New footage revealed the arrest of dozens of Palestinian men by the Israeli forces in Jabalia, with their eyes blindfolded, after separating them from their families.
“Words fail to describe what is going on now in northern Gaza,” Al Jazeera correspondent Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir Al-Balah in Gaza, said.
Writing for the news network, he said: “Civilians are witnessing brutality in one of the deadliest ethnic cleansing campaigns ever witnessed. Witnesses reported horrific details of what is happening this morning in Jabalia, where Israel is demolishing and burning homes to the ground.”
“And in Beit Lahiya – now turned into one of the most densely populated areas in Gaza after Palestinians fled there from Jabalia – the situation is dust and smoke coming from every corner with the smell of death everywhere,” he added.
According to the most recent toll, Israel has killed at least 42,792 persons in Gaza since 7 October 2023, mainly children and women, and wounded at least 100,412 others.
The head of the refugee agency UNRWA urged Israel and Hamas to reach an immediate truce to enable residents of north Gaza to leave.
UNRWA’s spokesperson Juliette Touma repeated the commissioner-general’s pleas, telling BBC that the organization’s workers fear for their safety amid a “tight siege” in the north, according to BBC.
“We received overnight a call for help from our team members in Gaza, who reported that life in northern Gaza has become hell,” she said. “They said themselves that they were waiting for their deaths.”
Touma added that the “smell of death is everywhere,” with rescue missions being unable to access parts of northern Gaza to retrieve bodies. Only a limited number of aid trucks could reach the area.
Without a truce, we (UNRWA) are “not allowed to do our job, to reach people in need and give them the basics: food and medicine,” Touma noted.
Before UNRWA urged for a truce, the five Nordic countries said Wednesday they are “deeply concerned by the recent introduction of draft legal bills in the Knesset that, if adopted, would prevent the UNRWA from continuing its operations in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza.”
In a joint letter signed by the region’s foreign ministers, they said if the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees “would no longer be able to exercise its core tasks,” this could further destabilize the situation in the region "and may fundamentally jeopardize the prospects for a two-state solution.”
They also strongly urged Israel "to ensure continued and unhindered humanitarian access” to Palestinian refugees.
Polio vaccination interrupted
The World Health Organization said it was forced to postpone the last phase of the polio vaccination drive in Gaza on Wednesday due to "intense bombardment" and "escalating violence" in the north.
The second round of vaccinations was due to begin on Wednesday, after having already been completed in the central and southern sections of the besieged Palestinian territory.
However, the WHO said it had been "compelled to postpone" the campaign to vaccinate 119,279 children in northern Gaza.
"The current conditions, including ongoing attacks on civilian infrastructure, continue to jeopardize people's safety and movement in northern Gaza, making it impossible for families to safely bring their children for vaccination" and for health workers to operate, it added.
The vaccination drive began after the Gaza Strip confirmed its first case of polio in 25 years.
The Israeli war has left most medical facilities and Gaza's sewage system in ruins.
WHO says two doses of oral vaccine minimally are needed to interrupt poliovirus transmission, requiring 90 percent of all children under 10 years old to be vaccinated in a given community.
"It is imperative to stop the polio outbreak as soon as possible before more children are paralysed and poliovirus spreads further," the UN health agency said.
"It is crucial therefore that the vaccination campaign in northern Gaza is facilitated through the implementation of the humanitarian pauses, ensuring access for wherever eligible children are located," it added.
Blinken in Saudi Arabia
This comes as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Saudi Arabia from Israel, where he met Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the hope of negotiating a ceasefire in Gaza.
Before leaving Israel, he said: "now is the time" to end the conflict in Gaza," urging Israel to avoid "greater escalation" with Iran.
"Since October 7 a year ago, Israel has achieved most of its strategic objectives when it comes to Gaza ... Now is the time to turn those successes into enduring, strategic success," Blinken claimed.
He also claimed that, despite the dire humanitarian conditions, he saw "progress being made, which is good, but more progress needs to be made and, most critically, it needs to be sustained."
Furthermore, the US diplomat urged Israel to seize what he described as an "incredible opportunity in this region to move in a totally different direction."
"Saudi Arabia would be right at the heart of that, and that includes potentially normalisation of relations with Israel," he stated.
Blinken will then visit Qatar and Britain, where he will hold talks with Arab counterparts on the Gaza and Lebanon wars.
Meanwhile, a Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzook visited Moscow, Russian state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported.
“The deputy head of the Hamas political bureau arrived in Moscow on a visit and several meetings with Russian officials are planned,” the news agency said on its Telegram channel, citing a diplomatic source.
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