Thousands trapped in Jabalia as Israel steps up attacks in northern Gaza

The Israeli military has launched deadly attacks across the Gaza Strip, including Deir el-Balah, Maghazi and Nuseirat refugee camps, Gaza City and Jabalia refugee camp, where MSF said thousands of people are trapped.

The Israeli attacks killed at least 41 people across Gaza on Friday, Palestinian medics said, with nearly half of the fatalities occurring in northern Gaza’s Jabalia, where Israeli forces are pressing ahead with a brutal ground offensive.

Six people were killed in a strike on a residential home that belonged to the al-Dayah family on Friday evening, southwest of Gaza City, civil defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah, said the continuing attacks have “all fed into one conclusion: mass killing going on for the sake of killing without a clear objective”.

“When we look at the deaths arriving at the hospital in Deir el-Balah, it is the same pattern with women and children making up the majority of them,” Mahmoud said.

“If they are lucky enough, they arrive here in one piece.”

The international charity Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, said on Friday that thousands of people were trapped in the Jabalia refugee camp amid the Israeli assault.

“Nobody is allowed to get in or out; anyone who tries is getting shot,” MSF project coordinator Sarah Vuylsteke said on X.

Five MSF staff were trapped in Jabalia, she said.

“I don’t know what to do; at any moment we could die. People are starving. I am afraid to stay, and I am also afraid to leave,” she quoted Haydar, an MSF driver, as saying.

At least 15 of the deaths in Jabalia since dawn were due to Israeli strikes targeting various areas, including a school sheltering displaced individuals, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa said, citing medical sources.

Gaza’s civil defence said dozens were wounded by Israeli quadcopter fire at the same school. Civil defence teams were able to transport 15 people to the Kamal Adwan hospital as efforts to evacuate the wounded are continuing, Basal said.

‘Catastrophic’ situation

In addition to Jabalia, the Israeli military has also sent troops into the nearby towns of Beit Hanoon and Beit Lahiya.

Palestinian health officials have said at least 130 people have been killed in the renewed assault in northern Gaza, while the military has ordered residents to evacuate areas where the UN estimates more than 400,000 people are trapped.

Northern Gaza has previously seen multiple ground and aerial attacks that left the area’s main hospital, Kamal Adwan Hospital, barely functional. It has previously been besieged, raided, and shelled.

Earlier this week, Israeli forces ordered the hospital to evacuate, along with two other medical facilities in the north.

In a statement on Friday, Gaza’s Government Media Office warned that the situation at Kamal Adwan is “catastrophic”, saying the coming hours will be crucial for the lives of many children currently in the intensive care unit.

Overcrowding and the lack of much-needed fuel have added to the many challenges, the statement said. Israel has continued to seal vital border crossings, and have prevented fuel from reaching the north.

The office called on the international community to intervene “to save what can be saved”.

The United States meanwhile said it has “real concern” about Israel preventing humanitarian aid from getting into the north of Gaza.

The US has spent at least $17.9bn on military aid to Israel since the war in Gaza began last October, according to a report for Brown University’s Costs of War project released on Monday.

United Nations officials have also expressed concern that the ongoing Israeli offensive and evacuation orders in northern Gaza could disrupt the second phase of its polio vaccination campaign set to begin next week.