Hundreds killed and injured in Israeli bombing of refugee camp in northern Gaza

“This is the tragedy of war. “We told them to go south.”. With these words, Lieutenant Colonel of the Israeli Army, Richard Hecht, referred to the bombing of the Jabalia refugee camp that this Tuesday left many civilians dead and injured.. This town, in the north of the Gaza Strip, was according to Israel the refuge of the commander of the Central Jabalia Battalion of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Ibrahim Biari.

Tel Aviv assures that the air attacks carried out on the Palestinian enclave since October 7 are aimed at destroying weapons warehouses or operations centers of the Islamist organization.. Despite this, in one of the most densely populated places in the world, civilians killed as a result of these attacks are already in the thousands, as recognized by the UN.. If the figures from this Tuesday's bombing are confirmed, it would be one of the deadliest since the start of the war.

Knowing the exact number of deaths in Gaza is not easy, given the blockade of the press and foreign organizations from entering the Palestinian region.. However, the images of local journalists and the information that is arriving little by little allow us to get an idea of the seriousness of what happened.. The first information points to 145 fatalities, as hospital sources confirm to Efe.. The number of people under the rubble could still be high, so the death toll could be higher.

The head of Public Relations at the Indonesian Hospital explained to the Spanish agency that the bombings occurred around 3:00 p.m. local time (2:00 p.m. Spanish peninsular time). After the afternoon prayer, “a large number of injured people began to arrive at the Emergency Department, in the hundreds, the majority were minors and women,” he said.. At least 90 deceased have been taken to its hospital, while another 55 have been transferred to the Kamal Adwan center, both in the north of the enclave.

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, there are “hundreds dead and injured”. For his part, the spokesman for the Hamas Interior Ministry, Iyad Bozum, stated in a press conference that there could be up to 400 deaths and injuries from the fall of six “American-made” bombs dropped by Israeli planes.

Israel confirms bombing in the area

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have confirmed the attack on the area, framing it as a “large-scale” offensive against Hamas members and their structures.. In this bombing, the IDF claims to have killed the commander of the Jabalia Hamas Central Battalion, Ibrahim Biari, “one of the leaders” of the attack on October 7 that left nearly 1,400 Israelis dead and more than 200 hostages. Likewise, the Israeli Army has added that “numerous” Hamas members also died in the attack and that the underground infrastructure was destroyed, which collapsed after the collapse of buildings.

In an interview with US television CNN, IDF Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht said they “are doing everything possible to minimize” the number of civilians killed in the attacks.. The soldier has been asked up to three times about the Jabalia event and if he knew that there were civilians in that field, to which he responded that the entire population had been notified. The Israeli military authorities assure that they have been calling for days to the population of northern Gaza to avoid their death in the bombings.. A call that the UN has recognized is “impossible” to fulfill and Amnesty International has warned that the displacement of the population can “constitute a war crime.”

This Tuesday marks the twenty-fifth day of war between Israel and Hamas. Since then, the deaths in the Strip due to bombings have reached 8,500 and the injured exceed 21,500.