THE death toll from Israel’s genocidal onslaught in Gaza topped 35,000 yesterday, as the regime’s tanks rolled into the massive Jabalia refugee camp.
At least 35,034 people have been killed, including 15,000 children, and up to 78,755 people injured since Israel launched its offensive on October 7, the Gaza Health Ministry said.
The tanks crossed Salah al-Din Street into the camp as battles raged between Hamas fighters and the Israeli military.
Israeli fighter jets ‘carpet-bombed’ the Jabalia refugee camp, killing and wounding residents.
In other areas of Gaza, Israeli attacks killed 27 Palestinians overnight, including several children in southern Rafah, as well as paediatric surgeon Muhammad Nimr Qazaat, 72, and his son Youssef, 33, in central Deir el-Balah.
‘It was a very difficult night,’ said Abdel-Kareem Radwan, aged 48, from Jabalia. He said they could hear intense and constant bombing since midday on Saturday, adding: ‘This is madness.’
The Hamas movement called on the international community and the UN to abandon their timid positions, provide urgent protection for the defenceless civilians in the Gaza Strip and pressure for an end to the Israeli aggression against them.
‘The Zionist occupation army’s announced launch of a military operation in Jabalia and its warning to the citizens living there to evacuate, amid criminal aerial and artillery bombardment, confirms that the terrorist Zionist government is insistent on continuing the genocidal war on our people in the Gaza Strip through bombing, massacres, displacement and the ongoing destruction of civilian structures,’ Hamas said in a statement on Saturday.
‘This is taking place in parallel with the operation in Rafah that has been ongoing for days, as well as with the incursion and crimes in az-Zeitoun neighbourhood in Gaza City and the escalating aggression against the civilians in all areas of the Strip,’ Hamas added.
Hamas held US president Joe Biden and his administration fully responsible for Israel’s escalation of its crimes against children, women and the elderly, accusing them of providing cover for the Israeli army to persist in its practices.
‘This criminal escalation will not weaken the fortitude of our steadfast people or weaken the resolve of our valiant resistance, which will continue to stand and remain steadfast in the face of the Zionist killing machine until the aggression against our people comes to an end and the occupation is removed from our land,’ Hamas said.