BEIRUT – Palestinians in northern Gaza described Saturday’s Israeli bombardment in the hours of airstrikes that killed at least 22 people, as Israel continued to tell people there and in southern Lebanon to stay out of the way of its attacks on Hamas and Hezbollah.
In Lebanon, the United Nations peacekeeping force said its headquarters in Naqoura was hit again, and a security guard was shot on Friday and in stable condition. It was not clear who fired the shots. The shooting occurred a day after Israeli forces opened fire on the headquarters for the second day in a row. Israel, which has warned the peacekeepers to leave their posts, did not immediately respond to questions.
There were also warnings of famine as residents in northern Gaza said they have not received any aid since the beginning of the month. The UN World Food Program said no food aid has entered the north since October 1. There are approximately 400,000 people left there.
Israel’s military renewed its offensive in northern Gaza last week while intensifying its air and ground campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Lebanon’s National News Agency said an Israeli airstrike hit a building in the coastal area of Zarout on the outskirts of Barja south of Beirut, while the Health Ministry said four people were killed. The ministry said another airstrike in Maisra village, northeast of Beirut, killed five.
The death toll in Lebanon in the past year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is now 2,255, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health. Hezbollah continued to fire at Israel.
“We will continue to stand with the Lebanese people during these difficult situations and with the Palestinian people,” said the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, on Saturday while viewing the scene of the Israeli airstrike in Beirut.
Gaza residents are trapped
In northern Gaza, residents told the Associated Press that many were trapped in their homes and shelters with dwindling supplies when they saw dead bodies left uncollected on the streets as the bombardment hampered emergency services.
Those who rushed to the scene of the latest airstrikes in the refugee camp in the town of Jabaliya found a hole 20 meters (65 feet) deep where a home once stood.
At least 20 bodies have been found since Saturday morning, and others may be trapped under the debris, emergency services said. Elsewhere in Jabaliya, a house strike killed two brothers and injured a woman and a newborn baby, officials said.
Another strike in the afternoon hit a house in Jabaliya, killing at least four people, including a woman, said Fares Abu Hamza, the head of the emergency department.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the strikes. Military spokesman Avichay Adraee told people in parts of Jabaliya and Gaza City to move south from the area designated by Israel as Israel plans to use heavy force “and will continue to do so for a long time.”
Israel has repeatedly returned to parts of Gaza as Hamas and other militias regroup. The war has devastated large areas of Gaza and displaced nearly 90 percent of its 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
Once again, some families moved south on foot, in donkey carts or crammed into vehicles plowing through the debris. Some refused to go.
“It’s like the first days of the war,” said Jabaliya resident Ahmed Abu Goneim. “The work is doing everything to remove us. But we will not leave.”
The 24-year-old said that Israeli warplanes and drones attacked several houses in the neighborhood last week. He counted 15 relatives and neighbors, including four women and five 3-year-old children, who were killed in neighboring houses. He said they died in the streets and “no one can save them because of the bombings.”
Hamza Sharif, who lives with his family in a shelter-turned-school in Jabaliya, described “bombing every day and night.”
He said the shelter has not received any help since the beginning of the month. “Families depend on what they have saved, but they will run out of things soon,” he said.
Food is running out
The World Food Program said it is not clear how long the limited food it distributed in northern Gaza will last.
A UN independent investigator on the right to food last month accused Israel of conducting a “starvation campaign” against Palestinians, which Israel has denied.
Israel’s attack on Gaza began after the attack by Hamas on October 7, when the army attacked Israel, killing about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and abducting about 250 people.
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not specify between the clashes and civilians. The Ministry of Health in Gaza said that hospitals received the bodies of 49 people who died in the last 24 hours.
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