Israel hit Gaza’s largest refugee camp with renewed air strikes Wednesday, prompting UN rights officials to warn that targeting densely populated residential areas “could amount to war crimes.”
Bombs struck the Jabalia camp for a second time in two days, pulverising buildings and, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, killing dozens of people.
AFP witnessed extensive damage at the scene, with people frantically clawing through rubble to extract bloodied casualties.
Israel said its fighter jets had carried out the strike, targeting “a Hamas command and control complex” and “eliminating” an undefined number of militants.
Rescuers said “whole families” had died, but casualty details could not be immediately confirmed.
Israel has hit 11,000-plus targets in Gaza since October 7 — when Hamas gunmen stormed into Israel and killed 1,400 people, including many civilians who were shot in cold blood.
Many nations backed Israel’s right to strike back at Hamas, but as the civilian toll has mounted, so too has criticism of Israeli tactics.
