Israeli airstrikes hit a densely populated district in Gaza, leaving behind a massive crater and widespread damage.
Israel said the targets were Hamas militants, including a commander who helped plan the Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel that killed 1,400 people.
The Gaza Health Ministry, which is run by Hamas, said the strikes in the Jabaliya neighborhood, home to the largest of Gaza’s eight refugee camps, had killed and wounded “hundreds,” but that could not be immediately verified.
A doctor at a nearby hospital said the facility was receiving hundreds of injured people and that dozens were dead.
The Israeli military said its fighter jets had struck at Ibrahim Biari, who it has called a key plotter of the Oct. 7 massacre, and “a large number of terrorists.”
A spokesman for Hamas denied that any of its commanders had been in the area.
Israeli repeated its warning that civilians should move south, as its ground troops and tanks edged closer to Gaza City.
Gaza’s Interior Ministry said Israeli forces were in a neighborhood north of the city and were trying to “separate the northern Gaza Strip from its south.”
Humanitarian officials warned of a growing catastrophe for Gaza’s civilians.
The top U.N. official for humanitarian and relief affairs said in a statement that “people are becoming increasingly desperate, as they search for food, water and shelter amid the relentless bombing campaign that is wiping out whole families and entire neighborhoods.”
Source: New York Times
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