An Israeli airstrike at a refugee camp in northern Gaza killed at least 50 people, including a key Hamas commander linked to the Oct. 7 terror attack on innocent civilians, reports said.
A series of aerial explosives rained down on residential dwellings at the center of the Jabalia refugee camp — located in the densely populated northern portion of the besieged enclave, according to Hamas officials.
The Israeli military said that the strikes were aimed at Hamas’ terror infrastructure in an area where civilians were warned to evacuate.
“This is the tragedy of war,” IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer after the attack on Tuesday.
Hecht accused Hamas of “hiding, as they do, behind civilians” and urged anyone remaining in Gaza “to move south” per Israel’s evacuation order.
Two IDF soldiers were killed while fighting in northern Gaza on Tuesday — the first Israeli ground troop death reported since Israel expanded its invasion into the enclave four days ago, a military spokesperson said.
The two soldiers, of the Givati Brigade, were killed in “hand-to-hand combat,” IDF’s Daniel Hagari told The Wall Street Journal.
Footage obtained by Reuters shows people at the destroyed refugee camp desperately searching for survivors through the rubble of the destroyed cement buildings, surrounded by deep craters.
The dead, covered in cloth, were laid out in the street by medics. The wounded, which included children, rushed inside buildings for treatment.
Hamas claimed that there were 400 casualties in Jabalia, which is located on the outskirts of Gaza City and has housed refugees from its conflicts with Israel since 1948.
“I was waiting in line to buy bread when suddenly and without any prior warning seven to eight missiles fell,” an eyewitness, Mohammad Ibrahim, told CNN.
“There were seven to eight huge holes in the ground, full of killed people, body parts all over the place,” he said. “It felt like the end of the world.”
When asked about the refugee camp strike, Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said Tuesday that he could not comment on individual strikes, but said the Israeli military is not “deliberately targeting civilians, unlike Hamas,” CNN reported.
Several countries in the Middle East have condemned Israel’s attack on Jabalia, including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
“Jordan’s Foreign Ministry condemns in the strongest terms the Israeli aggression that targeted the Jabalya camp in the Gaza Strip this evening, holding Israel, the occupying power responsible for this dangerous development,” Jordan’s Foreign Ministry tweeted in a statement.
Hamas claimed that Israel’s ground troops were taking losses in intense battles in northern Gaza.
“The occupation is pushing its soldiers into proud Gaza, which will always be the cemetery of invaders,” Hamas said in a statement.
The United States announced Tuesday it would be sending an additional 300 troops to the Middle East amid attacks against military bases.
Hamas’ extensive, 300-mile-long system of tunnels beneath Gaza City has become the prime target for IDF ground troops.
There are believed to be as many as 240 hostages that were seized by militants when it launched its attack on Israel on Oct. 7, complicating the already immensely difficult urban warfare. Hamas said it will begin releasing those with foreign passports on Tuesday.
Many Gaza civilians have refused Israel’s order to evacuate south and have remained behind as Israel continues to relentlessly bombard the region.
IDF officials said it struck more than 300 targets over the past day — including anti-tank missile and rocket launch posts below tunnel shafts, as well as underground Hamas military compounds.
“The north is at the moment, at least we hope, as clean as possible of non-combatants because that is the goal we have set for ourselves, to know how to deal primarily with terrorists and not harm non-combatants,” Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi told a televised briefing in Jerusalem.
“But the south’s turn will come, the center’s turn will come… As we have mentioned, this is a long battle,” Hanegbi added
Some 8,525 people, including 3,542 children, have been killed in Israeli attacks since Oct. 7, according to Gaza health authorities. U.N. officials say more than 1.4 million of Gaza’s civilian population of about 2.3 million have been made homeless.
About 1,400 people, mainly civilians, were killed in the cross-border Hamas assault on Oct. 7, Israel says.
The Israeli military says 317 of its soldiers have been killed since the start of the war.
With Post Wires
