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GAZA — An Israeli airstrike on a multi-story building in northern Gaza killed at least 27 people, relief officials said, as the Israeli military issued new evacuation orders in the area, where it is mounting a major offensive.
The home of the Mbahouh family in Jabalya was struck on Thursday afternoon, according to the spokesperson for Gaza’s Civil Defense, Mahmoud Basal.
He said the four-story property was sheltering more than 50 displaced people, and some had been trapped in a warehouse at the bottom of the building.
CNN is reaching out to the Israeli military on the target of the strike.
Also on Thursday, an Israeli airstrike hit Al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City. Another killed at least four people in Al-Rimal School, west of Gaza City, Basal said.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed the airstrike on Al-Shati refugee camp and claimed the school was used as a “command and control center” by Hamas. The IDF said it not comment on the second attack without coordinates.
The Israeli military campaign in Gaza since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks has demolished entire neighborhoods and rendered large swathes of the strip uninhabitable.
At least 43,469 Palestinians have been killed and another 102,561 people injured in Gaza, according to the Ministry of Health there.
Human rights agencies warned of “apocalyptic” survival challenges for Palestinians trapped in Jabalya, home to a large refugee camp, where the Israeli military ramped up aerial and ground attacks in early October that it says are targeting Hamas’ renewed presence in the area.
The UK-based NGO, Medical Aid for Palestinians, accused Israel of “making Palestinian survival in northern Gaza impossible as part of a policy of sustained pressure and forcible expulsion,” in a statement to CNN on Monday.
Israeli airstrikes and shelling reportedly killed at least 30 other people in Gaza since Wednesday. Most of those Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks in the Beit Lahiya area of northern Gaza.
An Israeli airstrike struck a residential building in the Mashrou’ neighborhood of Beit Lahiya, killing six people and injuring several others, journalists and medics say, who added that a further six people were killed in second strike in the same area. Four others were killed in a separate drone strike in Beit Lahiya, they said.
In addition, six people had been killed, according to local journalists, as a result of Israeli artillery shelling west of Jabalya camp in northern Gaza.
The head of field hospitals in Gaza, Dr. Marwan Al-Hams, told CNN Thursday that the “health situation in the north is more than catastrophic… Three hospitals in the north of the Strip are out of service, and we cannot perform surgeries.”
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that “troops started to operate in the area of Beit Lahiya following prior intelligence information and a situational assessment indicating the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure.”
The IDF said it also continues operations in Jabalya in northern Gaza and had killed some “50 terrorists” over the past day.
An aid worker displaced in Gaza City recounted the mental anguish of being uprooted from one neighborhood to another, after the Israeli military issued fresh evacuation orders to Palestinians in northern Gaza on Thursday.
Mahmoud Shalabi, the deputy director of programmes for MAP, said he has been forced to flee at least seven times since October 2023 – including from northern Gaza to Gaza City. Shalabi’s testimony was shared with CNN by MAP.
“I am really unsure whether I will be able to see my home again. And even if I am allowed to go back, will our homes remain as they are?” he said on Thursday. “It’s as if it’s a new Nakba.
“We are being forced to flee from our homes under brutal force,” he added. “My three children keep asking me, ‘When are we going to return back home?’ And I really can’t answer that question.
“To exist on this land is to resist,” said Shalabi. “I will not leave. I want to live a dignified life.”
The military’s Arabic spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, posted on X a demand that residents leave several areas of northern Gaza, saying that “once again, terrorist organizations are launching rocket attacks toward the state of Israel.”
Adraee said that the “specified area has been warned multiple times previously. We inform you that the specified area is considered a dangerous combat zone, so for your safety, move south immediately.”
Elsewhere, in central Gaza, according to a CNN stringer at the scene, Civil Defense said it had recovered eight bodies after a strike in Al-Nuseirat refugee camp on Wednesday night.
A male witness, Salim Mohammed Alaa Abu Najeh, told CNN that his sister’s home was targeted.
“They were at home when suddenly a missile hit their building… They have no connection to any organizations or anything like that. They were unarmed, poor people with difficult circumstances, who struggled to build this home.”
Among those in the building were orphans who had been raised by their grandmother, Abu Najeh said.
CNN has asked the IDF about the target of the attack.
Israeli operations also continue in southern Gaza, where the IDF said Thursday that a “number of armed terrorists” had been killed in the Rafah area.
The Palestine Red Crescent said paramedics had transferred five bodies to hospital as a result of an Israeli drone attack in the Al-Janina neighborhood, east of Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip. Journalists said four of those killed were from the same family.
Additionally, they said, two people were killed in a strike launched from an Israeli military quadcopter. — CNN
