Palestinians carry bodies after an Israeli strike in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza Strip. AFP
Rescuers on Sunday said they had pulled at least 34 bodies — including women and children — from the rubble of the building in the Beit Lahia district after a particularly lethal pre-dawn Israeli strike.
The United Nations and others have decried humanitarian conditions in the area due to an Israeli blockade that has stopped all but a trickle of aid from entering the northern Gaza Strip, leaving civilians to face famine after more than a year of ongoing aggression in warfare methods that have been consistent with genocide.
"First responders and civilians are using rudimentary tools to look for survivors under the building's rubble," civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
"We hope to find survivors, but hope is fading as time goes on," he said, adding that, like the rest of the population, rescuers lacked everything from food to medicine.
Since the start of the Israeli war on Gaza last year, the agency has asked for special tools to be allowed in, particularly those that would allow workers to search through rubble. Israel has not allowed these tools to pass its blockade, leaving the agency woefully unprepared.
On 24 October, it announced it was no longer able to continue operating in northern Gaza because of a lack of supplies and Israeli threats against its teams.
Nonetheless, its rescue efforts have persisted.
"A drone targeted a young man that was driving a tuk-tuk that he was using to transport martyrs," Abdullah Hammouda, a resident of the targeted building, told AFP, referring to a type of motorcycle taxi.
Dusty, displaced
Hammouda's wife Abeer, still in shock from the "terrifying explosion", said that "had it happened in another country, the whole world would be outraged".
The 34 dead in Beit Lahia are among a total of 43,922 civilians, a majority of them women and children, killed in Israel's war on the strip.
Israel's air and ground assault in north Gaza began in the Jabalia area before expanding to Beit Lahia.
On Monday, Josep Borrell, the European Union's outgoing foreign policy chief, said he had "no more words."
"It's about 44,000 people killed in Gaza, the whole area is being destroyed, and 70 percent of the people being killed are women or children," Borrell said.
Jordan and Qatar on Sunday urged "immediate" action to "end the unprecedented humanitarian disaster in northern Gaza," their foreign ministers said in a joint statement, blaming "Israel's failure to allow aid to enter."
On Monday, Bassal expressed concern that more than 70,000 residents of Beit Lahia and Jabalia lacked clean water and food amid frequent air strikes.
AFP journalists on Sunday saw many fleeing Beit Lahia on foot, donkey cart or bicycle towards Gaza City to the south.
Children, women and men walked amid rubble and waste piles, some covered in dust. Loaded with bundles and bags, some pulled improvised carts full of what belongings they could carry.
*This story was edited by Ahram Online
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