On Thursday morning, official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that there had been intense Israeli air strikes in the al-Hoja street area of Jabalia refugee camp, causing its “complete destruction”. Five people were meanwhile wounded in a drone strike in the al-Faluja area, it added.
Hamas’s military wing claimed on Thursday that it had fired an anti-tank missile at an Israeli troop carrier in the Block 2 area of Jabalia camp and targeted armoured bulldozers with explosive devices east of Jabalia town.
The IDF’s Chief of Staff, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi, told troops in Gaza on Tuesday that Israeli forces were “striking widely and strongly” in Jabalia.
“We see there attempts [by Hamas] to hold on and rebuild, therefore we need to deal with this again, and prove that we will return each time,” he added.
Wafa also cited medical sources as saying that more than 30 civilians, including 10 children, had been killed in Israeli air strikes on residential buildings in nearby Gaza City. Palestine Post photojournalist Mahmoud Jahjouh and several members of his family were reportedly among the dead.
The IDF scaled down operations in Jabalia, Gaza City and the rest of the north in January after declaring that it had “dismantled” Hamas’s battalions there. But that left a power vacuum in which the group has been able to rebuild.
An estimated 300,000 people trapped in the devastated region are also experiencing a “full-blown famine” due to a lack of aid deliveries, according to the head of the World Food Programme.
In the south of Gaza on Thursday, fresh Israeli air strikes killed at least five people in southern and central Rafah, Wafa reported.
The IDF has ordered the evacuation of a number of neighbourhoods since 6 May, when it began what it called “precise operations” against Hamas in “specific areas of eastern Rafah and the Gazan side of the Rafah crossing”.
Israel says it needs to send troops into the city because Hamas’s last remaining battalions are based there. But the UN and Western powers say an all-out assault could lead to mass civilian casualties and a humanitarian catastrophe.
