As a cease-fire took hold in Lebanon this week, the death toll continued to mount in Gaza.
More than 75 people were killed in two separate attacks in the city of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza on Friday, Gaza civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said. Many members of one family were killed in one of the attacks, Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Gaza Health Ministry, said in a telephone interview.
“Entire families have been wiped out in northern Gaza, and we have no information about their fate,” Bassal said. “Survivors remain trapped under the rubble for extended periods with no civil defense teams available to rescue them.”
Bassal and Bursh said the situation in northern Gaza is difficult to discern because of restrictions imposed by the Israeli military, such as the lack of access to targeted areas.
Beit Lahia resident Mohammed al-Kilani, 38, said five artillery shells were fired on Friday afternoon at the home of his neighbors, the Baba family. Four people were killed in the attack, he said.
Kilani said he and other neighbors toiled for three hours to evacuate the dead and injured from the home. While transporting the injured, a horse-drawn cart was struck by another missile, which killed six people, he said.
The 10 dead members of the Baba family were buried in front of their home. “It was too dangerous to transport them to the hospital,” Kilani said.
Three people were killed in a strike west of Gaza City, Gaza’s civil defense agency said early Friday. Israel has prevented the main emergency rescue service in the enclave from working in the north for more than a month, it said.
“Conditions for survival are diminishing” in Gaza’s north for an estimated 65,000 to 75,000 people remaining in the area besieged by the Israel Defense Forces, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which aids Palestinian refugees, said Thursday.
The United Nations attempted 91 aid deliveries there between Oct. 6 — when Israel began its operation in north Gaza, which it says is to target regrouping militants — and Nov. 25, UNRWA said. All those deliveries were denied or impeded, it said.
The Israeli military agency responsible for coordinating relief in Gaza said Monday that more than 1,000 aid trucks have entered north Gaza during its intensified campaign. It has rejected findings that there is a risk of famine in Gaza’s north as “incorrect and inconsistent with the situation on the ground.”
More than than 3,400 children throughout the Gaza Strip have been admitted for acute malnutrition in November, the U.N. humanitarian affairs office said this week. There was a “significant increase” during October in children showing swelling caused by a severe lack of protein, it added, including about three-quarters of children treated at two malnutrition stabilization centers in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.