At least 87 killed in strike on northern Gaza

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry reported that at least 87 people were killed and over 40 injured in an Israeli air strike on Beit Lahiya, the city of Beit Lahiya in the north of the Palestinian enclave.

The ministry said a number of people were still under rubble after a residential area was hit. Israel said it was checking reports of casualties but added that earlier – lower – figures published by Hamas were “exaggerated”.

In recent weeks, the Israel military has been carrying out intense bombardment of northern Gaza, saying it wanted to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping there. A senior UN official warned that the “nightmare in Gaza is intensifying” and the war “must stop now.”

The UN’s peace process co-ordinator, Tor Wennesland, condemned the continuing attacks on civilians and called for an end to the “siege” on hospitals in northern Gaza and “for life to return to normal… before it’s too late, before our nation is exterminated.”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) described the strike as a “precision” attack on a “Hamas terror target” and told the BBC it was “doing everything possible to avoid causing harm to civilians”. Dr Eid Sabbah, Kamal Adwan Hospital’s director of nursing, said the Israeli strike in Beit Lahia had completely destroyed several buildings, with “more than four, five residential blocks… razed to the ground.”

The strikes targeted an entire residential square, in between Abu Jidian roundabout and Al Qassam Mosque. Humanitarian groups have warned that virtually no aid has entered the area in the past few weeks, and Israel’s own statistics show that aid deliveries to Gaza as a whole have collapsed when compared with the same period in September.

On Saturday, the UN’s top humanitarian official, Joyce Msuya, said that Palestinians in northern Gaza are enduring “unspeakable horrors” and called for these “atrocities” to stop.

Israel has repeatedly denied it is preventing humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, but on Tuesday the US told it to boost access within 30 days or risk having some American military assistance cut off. At least 42,603 people have been killed and 99,795 injured in Gaza since the war began last October, the Hamas-run authorities say.