Children killed while rushing to flee their homes; families carrying whatever possessions they can as they navigate bomb-blasted roads; dozens of detained men lined up on a muddy hillside: These and other stark images have emerged from Israel’s deadly offensive in northern Gaza in recent days.
Israel’s renewed assault on the north of the Palestinian enclave has fueled mounting warnings from officials and aid groups around the world about “nonstop” Israeli strikes, forced displacement and possible famine.
“In northern Gaza, people are just waiting to die,” Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of UNRWA, the United Nations’ agency supporting Palestinian refugees, said in a statement Tuesday, sounding the alarm on the dire humanitarian situation in the north. Already, he said, “the smell of death is everywhere.”
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Fleeing Jabalia
Video captured by an NBC News crew showed dozens of people fleeing the area of the Jabalia refugee camp on Monday, surrounded by buildings that had been reduced to rubble. Young children could be seen among those fleeing, with most people carrying no more than a single backpack.
That same day, the NBC News crew captured the panic that followed a strike in which paramedics said at least nine people were killed while trying to flee Jabalia to nearby Beit Lahia.
A paramedic with Gaza’s Civil Defense said displaced Palestinians had been hit by artillery shells while trying to escape Israeli strikes, with NBC News video showing some of those killed and wounded being brought to Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia.
But even some who managed to escape Israel’s offensive in the north and head farther south toward Gaza City did not survive.
Video showed the remains of several people, including two young children who NBC News’ crew reported were killed in an Israeli drone strike after fleeing the area of the Jabalia refugee camp.
In the video, the bodies of several people can be seen in the back of an ambulance, while the bodies of two young boys, identified as Mahmoud Ouda, 8, and Ismail Amro, 10, could be seen lying on an orange stretcher. One of the boys can be seen with his stomach torn open and his organs spilling out onto the stretcher, his eyes still hanging open.
Both children were taken to Al-Ahli Al-Arabi Hospital in Gaza City to be identified and counted among the more than 42,700 who have been killed since Israel launched its offensive in the enclave more than one year ago, according to local health officials. And with thousands of people missing and buried under the rubble, the true death toll is feared to be much higher.
The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza has accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” over its expansive operations in northern Gaza, where it says more than 600 people have been killed in just over two weeks, while thousands more have been forced to flee the area. The Jerusalem-based human rights group B’Tselem echoed the accusation Tuesday, calling on the international community to “stop the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza.”
While these scenes of devastation have played out in Gaza, some Israeli settlers, including government ministers, gathered for a two-day conference on the enclave’s border this week calling for the resettlement of the Palestinian territory, which Israel evacuated two decades ago.
The U.S. has expressed growing frustrations over its ally’s actions in Gaza, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken warning Israeli officials Wednesday that they are not doing enough to allow desperately needed aid into the besieged coastal enclave.
During a news briefing, Blinken said he had received assurance from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the “reoccupation of Gaza” was not part of “the policy of the Israeli government.”
He also said the “General’s plan,” a proposal calling for Israel to force the evacuation of residents from northern Gaza through starvation, had not been adopted as Israeli policy.
U.N. officials have also warned of a dire humanitarian crisis in the north, with Lazzarini saying UNRWA staff were struggling to find “food, water or medical care” for themselves as they also sought to help civilians in the area.
Meanwhile, UNICEF warned Wednesday that the third and final phase of the polio vaccination campaign in Gaza, which was set to begin the same day and aimed to vaccinate 119,279 children, had to be postponed because of Israeli bombardment and mass displacement orders.
“The current conditions, including ongoing attacks on civilian infrastructure, continue to jeopardize people’s safety and movement in northern Gaza, making it impossible for families to safely bring their children for vaccination, and for health workers to operate,” UNICEF said in a joint news release with the World Health Organization.
Images published by the Israel Defense Forces over the weekend, showing dozens of men being detained in northern Gaza as thousands of people fled the area en masse, have also sparked alarm.
Asked whether the dozens of people arrested were still being detained and if so why, as well as whether any children were among those detained, the IDF referred NBC News to the Israel Security Agency, or the Shin Bet, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dr. Munir Al Barash, director-general of the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza, said in a post on X that the imagery published by the IDF was proof of “ethnic cleansing in Jabalia, northern Gaza.”
His accusations came after the U.N. Nations Human Rights Office said officials were growing “increasingly concerned that the manner in which the Israeli military is conducting hostilities in north Gaza” may be “causing the destruction of the Palestinian population in Gaza’s northernmost governate through death and displacement.”
The U.N. human rights office said the Israeli military’s actions in northern Gaza had made life there “impossible” for Palestinians, while constant bombardments in the area made it “extremely dangerous” for civilians to flee.
It also raised concerns over the fate of the dozens of men seen being detained by Israeli forces, expressing fears they could be “subjected to arbitrary detention, as well as torture and other ill treatment.”