Dozens killed after Israel bombs Palestinian refugee camps

Israeli airstrikes have devasted Palestinian refugee camps in west Gaza(Credits: EPA)

Dozens of Palestinians have been killed and injured after the Israeli military bombed refugee camps in Al-Shati and Jabalia.

The camps have been the latest Palestinian settlements to be targeted by Israeli forces as they continue to escalate their war on Gaza after an attack by Hamas over the weekend killed 1,300 Israelis and injured thousands more.

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Palestinian news agency WAFA confirmed an attack hit a market area in Jabalia, ‘killing and wounding dozens and causing heavy destruction’. 

A person is carried from the scene of an Israeli rocket attack in the western Shati refugee camp, western Gaza Strip, on October 12, 2023 (Picture: EPA)

A view shows the ruins of Palestinian houses hit by Israeli strikes at al-Shati (Beach) refugee camp, in Gaza City (Picture: Reuters)

The Reuters news agency also quoted the Gaza-based Ministry of Health as saying the attack has killed and wounded dozens of people.

Numerous children were reported to have been killed in the attack, Al Jazeera reports. Following the strikes, men were seen clawing through the rubble to recover an infant’s tiny body from the rubble and another small boy was laid to rest at the local cemetery, his body shrouded in a white cloth.

Local man Nasser Abu Quta told reporters 19 members of his family, including his wife, had been killed when an air strike hit their home.

There were no fighters in his building, he said. ‘This is a safe house, with children and women,’ he told the AP press agency via telephone.

A man looks at the destruction in a ravaged neighbourhood in the Gaza Strip Jabalia refugee camp on October 11, 2023, following overnight Israeli airstrikes amid continuing battles between Israel and the Hamas movement (Picture: AFP)

More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed and more than 5,000 injured, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health (Picture: EPA)

Another strike in the same city early Monday killed 11 people, including women and children.

Similar scenes of devastation were reported at the Shati refugee camp, also known as Beach Camp, where ‘dozens’ of casualties were rushed to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City after suffered severe injuries at the hands of Israeli bombers.

At least 1,417 Palestinians are now confirmed to have died since Saturday, according to the Gaza health ministry.

More than a third of the civilians killed in the barrages of airstrikes on Gaza since Saturday are children.

This picture taken on October 11, 2023 shows an aerial view of buildings destroyed by Israeli air strikes in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees in Gaza City (Picture: Getty)

Palestinians search for survivors after an Israeli airstrike on buildings in the refugee camp of Jabalia in the Gaza Strip (Picture: AFP)

At least 447 children have died, Gaza’s health ministry has confirmed.

The Israeli army has called up about 300,000 reservists following the weekend’s attacks, and said in a statement it would aim to end Hamas’s rule of Gaza.

‘We have never drafted so many reservists on such a scale,” Israel’s chief military spokesperson, Daniel Hagari, told reporters. “We are going on the offensive.’

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned civilians to get away from all Hamas sites, which he has promised to turn ‘to rubble’.

During a televised address, he vowed to crush Hamas and said Israel’s response would ‘reverberate with their enemies for generations’.

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