Jabalia refugee camp blast: Dozens reportedly killed in Gaza

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Explosion at Gaza refugee camp leaves massive crater

By David GrittenBBC News

Dozens of people are reported to have been killed by a huge explosion at Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said at least 50 people were killed and 150 wounded by an Israeli air strike, which it denounced as a “horrific massacre”.

Pictures showed people climbing through several large craters and searching for survivors inside wrecked buildings.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has been bombarding Gaza for three weeks.

Earlier, the military said its ground forces were engaged in “fierce battles” with Hamas fighters deep inside the Gaza Strip and had killed dozens of them when it attacked an outpost in the north.

Hamas said its fighters had been using anti-tank missiles and machine-guns against the advancing troops.

Israel has said it is the “second phase” of its war to eliminate Hamas, which began after an unprecedented cross-border attack by gunmen from Gaza on 7 October in which 1,400 people were killed and another 240 taken hostage.

Gaza’s health ministry says more than 8,500 people have been killed in the territory since then, while supplies of food, water, fuel and medicine for its 2.2 million residents are dangerously low because of a siege imposed by Israel.

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters
Hundreds of people were seen searching the wreckage for the dead and injured

Tuesday’s explosion in Jabalia reportedly destroyed several residential buildings in the centre of the densely populated camp.

AFP news agency reported that its video footage from the scene showed at least 47 bodies being pulled from the rubble.

A vast column of black smoke was clearly visible from inside Israel at about the time the first reports came in.

One weapons expert said the largest crater was consistent with those caused by the sorts of bombs the Israeli air force was using to hit targets buried deep underground.

Jabalia resident Ragheb Aqal said it had felt like there was “an earthquake”.

“I went and saw the destruction… homes buried under the rubble and body parts and martyrs and wounded in huge numbers,” he told AFP.

The medical director of the Indonesian Hospital, in nearby Beit Lahia, also said it had received dozens of dead and hundreds of wounded people.

One of the doctors, Subaib Idais, told Reuters news agency: “They were just in their homes, they were targeted while they were in their homes… All martyrs, children, women, elderly.”

“We have no idea what to do. There are injured everywhere. All the volunteers went down hand-in-hand just to help people,” he added.

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Jabalia is the largest of the Gaza Strip’s eight refugee camps. It is located in the north of Gaza City, and before the war its 116,000 registered residents lived in an area of just 1.4 sq km (0.5 sq miles).

It has been hit repeatedly since Israel’s bombing campaign began in response to Hamas’s attack.

It is not clear how many people have fled the camp since then, but the pictures of hundreds searching in the rubble for bodies suggest that many remain.

On 13 October, the Israeli military ordered the 1.1 million people living in Jabalia and all other parts of northern Gaza to move to areas south of the Wadi Gaza river for their own safety, as it stepped up air and artillery strikes on what it said were Hamas targets in preparation for the ground offensive.

However, hundreds of thousands are believed not to have heeded the order.

The UN says about 117,000 displaced civilians are staying in 13 hospitals across the north, along with thousands of patients. Many others are sheltering in UN facilities, schools, churches and other public buildings.

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• Israel & the Palestinians
• Israel-Gaza war
• Israel
• Palestinian territories
• Gaza

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