Qatar-based Al Jazeera Media Network said an Israeli bombardment of Jabalia Camp in northern Gaza killed 22 relatives of its Gaza correspondent Moamen Al-Sharafi.
In Geneva, the UN human rights chief said the situation in Gaza was “apocalyptic” with the risk that serious rights violations were being committed by both sides.
Hundreds of thousands of people made homeless in north Gaza during the war were desperately seeking shelter in the few places in the south designated as safe by Israel.
The UN humanitarian office said on Wednesday that most of the homeless people in Rafah, about 13km south of Khan Younis, were sleeping rough due to a lack of tents although the UN had managed to distribute a few hundred.
While some aid had entered Gaza from Egypt through the Rafah crossing, the surge in hostilities since a week-long truce collapsed on Dec 1 was hindering its distribution, the UN report said.
Displaced civilians were also fleeing to the desolate area of Al Mawasi on Gaza’s southern Mediterranean coast, which Israel has said is safe.
The former Bedouin village lacks shelter, food and other necessities, according to refugee organisations.
“There are no bathrooms. We cannot even wash if we want to pray,” displaced Palestinian Enas Mosleh told Al Jazeera television. “It is a completely remote area.”
Another Palestinian who fled to Al Mawasi, Ibrahim Mahram, said five families were sharing a tent.
“We suffered from the war of cannons and escaped it to arrive at the war of starvation,” he told the network.
“We divide one tomato between all of us.”
NEW CEASEFIRE EFFORT AT UN
Israel unleashed its military campaign in response to a surprise Oct 7 incursion by Hamas fighters who rampaged through Israeli towns, killing 1,200 people and seizing 240 hostages, according to Israel’s tally.
So far, 87 soldiers have been killed in combat in Gaza, the Israeli military said.
Figures from Gaza’s Health Ministry put the death toll in Gaza at 16,015, including 43 reported by one hospital on Tuesday and 73 by another on Wednesday. But because the ministry has not released casualty figures for all of Gaza since Monday, it was unclear if that toll was comprehensive, and the ministry and the UN have said hundreds of people are unaccounted for under the rubble.
As Israel broadened its onslaught after largely taking control of north Gaza last month, Palestinian medics said Gaza’s hospitals were overflowing with dead and wounded, many of them women and children, and supplies were running out.
The UN said only two hospitals in the north were now admitting patients, down from 24 before the war.
Leaders of the Group of Seven nations including Israel’s close ally the United States called for further humanitarian truces “to address the deteriorating humanitarian crisis in Gaza and minimise civilian casualties”.
The United Nations Security Council received a UAE-drafted resolution on Wednesday that demanded an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” with a vote sought on Friday.
A senior Hamas official told Reuters, mediators were still exploring opportunities for a truce and reiterated its demand that Israel cease its attacks.
Warning of a “severe risk of collapse of the humanitarian system,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday invoked rarely used Article 99 of the founding UN Charter to push for a ceasefire in a letter to the Security Council.
Source: CNA
