Editor’s Note: This story contains graphic material that some readers may find disturbing.
Bodies strewn across dusty streets, entire roads destroyed by Israeli strikes, people starving. This is the picture painted of Jabalya, northern Gaza, by the emergency services chief in the area.
“Stray dogs who are hungry are eating these bodies in the street… It makes it difficult for us to identify the bodies,” he said.
Afana said that there are “thousands of children” and pregnant women stuck in the besieged area, where the Israeli military has carried out aerial and ground attacks in three neighborhoods over the past 12 days.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it is targeting Hamas’ renewed presence there.
At least 50,000 people have been displaced from the Jabalya area, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported on Sunday. The 400,000 who remain in northern Gaza are stalked by hunger and face thunderous bombardment.
The UN has accused the Israeli military of forcing residents of northern Gaza to choose between starvation or relocation.
“Civilians are given no choice but to either starve or leave,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN’s agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), said in a statement on Monday. “In Gaza, too many red lines have been crossed. What might constitute war crimes can still be prevented.”
The Israeli agency that manages the flow of aid into Gaza said that 30 trucks entered the north on Monday, insisting that Israel “is not preventing the entry of humanitarian aid.”
Afana said that on Monday Israeli forces had fired on hungry residents searching for food at a warehouse aid center run by UNRWA. “The situation is getting worse,” he said.
UNRWA said that an artillery attack at its Jabalya food distribution center on Monday reportedly killed at least 10 people and injured another 40.
“For the paramedics, it is also very dangerous to reach this area… as a result of the roads being blown up and direct fire from the Israeli military on our vehicles,” Afana said.
He said ambulances had been hit by shrapnel from Israeli artillery shelling near Yemen al-Sa’eed Hospital, in Jabalya, sharing a video of the aftermath that showed an ambulance with crushed tires and bullet marks.
“What is happening in northern Gaza is a real genocide,” he added. “We can’t do our job normally.”
At least 342 Palestinians have been killed in parts of northern Gaza since the Israeli operations started earlier this month, Gaza’s Government Media Office reported on Monday, adding that hundreds of “civilians, children and women” have been injured. On Tuesday, at least 17 people were killed in northern Gaza, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense.