A barrage of Israeli airstrikes leveled apartment buildings in a refugee camp near Gaza City on Tuesday, and footage showed rescuers pulling men, women and children out of the rubble. Israel said the strike destroyed a Hamas command center set up in civilian houses and a network of tunnels underneath.
The toll from the strikes in the Jabaliya camp was not immediately known. The Israeli military said a large number of militants were killed, including the commander overseeing Hamas operations in northern Gaza.
The director of the nearby hospital where casualties were taken, Dr. Atef Al-Kahlot, said hundreds were wounded or killed, but he did not provide exact figures. Neither side’s account could be independently confirmed. The strike underlined the anticipated surge in casualties on both sides as Israeli troops battling Hamas militants advance deeper into the northern Gaza Strip toward dense, residential neighborhoods. Israel has vowed to crush Hamas’ ability to govern Gaza or threaten Israel following its bloody Oct. 7 rampage, which ignited the war.
Israel said two of its soldiers were killed in fighting in northern Gaza, the first military deaths it reported since the ground offensive into the tiny Mediterranean territory accelerated late last week.
Several hundred thousand Palestinians remain in northern Gaza in the path of the ground assault. They have crowded into homes or are packed by the thousands into hospitals that are already overwhelmed with patients and running low on supplies.
In the Jabaliya refugee camp — a densely built-up area of small streets on Gaza City’s outskirts — footage of the scene from Al-Jazeera TV showed at least four large craters where buildings once stood amid rubble surrounded by partially collapsed structures.
Dozens of rescue workers and bystanders dug through the wreckage, searching for survivors beneath the pancaked buildings. Young men carried the limp forms of two children from the upper floors of a damaged apartment block’s crumbling frame while helping down another child and woman. It was unclear whether the children were alive or dead. The Israeli military said it carried out a wide-scale strike in Jabaliya on Hamas infrastructure “that had taken over civilian buildings.”
Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari said an underground Hamas installation beneath a targeted building collapsed, toppling other nearby buildings. He said the commander killed in the strike, Ibrahim Biari, played a role in the October 7 attack on Israel.
Also on Tuesday, the Israeli military said ground troops took control of a Hamas military stronghold in west Jabaliya, killing 50 militants.
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem denied the military’s claim, saying it was trying to justify “its heinous crime” against civilians. Hagari repeated calls for civilians to evacuate northern Gaza to the south. The military says it targets Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that the militants endanger civilians by operating among them. The military has also repeatedly emphasized it will strike Hamas wherever it finds it. Some 800,000 Palestinians have reportedly fled to the south, but many have not, in part because they say nowhere is safe as Israeli airstrikes in the south have continued to cause civilian deaths.
