Israel intensifies assault on northern Gaza amid growing fears of siege

Israeli forces have intensified their squeeze around the Jabalia camp in northern Gaza, killing at least 10 people queuing for food, according to Palestinian medics, and ordered people to evacuate as they press on with their ground assault on the area.

The Israeli army launched a ground assault again in northern Gaza 10 days ago, including in Beit Hanoon and Beit Lahiya. Backed by warplanes, the army has continued to pound the ravaged area that has seen multiple assaults throughout the year-long war.

More than 400,000 people remain trapped in the area. They have been unable to move southwards after the Israeli military ordered forced evacuations due to security concerns.

“We have been hit from the air and the ground, non-stop for a week. They want us to leave, they want to punish us for refusing to leave our homes,” Marwa, 26, who fled with her family to a school in Gaza City, told the Reuters news agency.

People were afraid they would never be able to return if they head south, she said.

The United Nations Human Rights Office said the Israeli military appeared to be “cutting off North Gaza completely from the rest of the Gaza Strip”.

“The separation of North Gaza raises further concerns that Israel does not intend to allow civilians to return to their homes, and the repeated calls for all Palestinians to leave northern Gaza raise grave concerns of large-scale forced transfer of the civilian population,” it said in a statement.

The renewed assault has underlined how difficult life has become for civilians in Gaza as fighting has shifted between different areas of the enclave.

On Monday, Israeli forces killed 10 Palestinians queuing for food at a distribution centre, and wounded 40 others, including women and children, according to Palestinian medics, while another eight people were killed in a separate incident in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan district.

The Israeli military said the incident was under review.

Separately, at least three people were killed in an Israeli attack on a school-turned-shelter in the Jabalia camp, the Turkish news agency Anadolu reported, citing a medical source.

The United Nations has described dire conditions affecting the population remaining in Jabalia, with more than 50,000 people displaced and water wells, bakeries, medical points and shelters shut down.

‘Beyond any rationale’

UN chief Antonio Guterres condemned the “large number of civilian casualties in the intensifying Israeli campaign in northern Gaza”, according to his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.

“He [Guterres] strongly urges all parties to the conflict to comply with international humanitarian law and emphasises that civilians must be respected and protected at all times,” Dujarric told reporters.

Hamas said Israel aimed to displace the people of northern Gaza by force. “The international community should act against this war crime,” said senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri.

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah, said the situation in northern Gaza was dire.

“Medical sources at Kamal Adwan Hospital say they are running short of medical supplies and essential medical needs, including fuel that is required to guarantee that operations can be conducted,” Abu Azzoum said.

He said healthcare providers are struggling to deal with “high rates of casualties” as people are being killed by Israeli drones and quadcopters.

They are being targeted whether in their homes, in evacuation centres, or simply while “walking the streets of Jabalia”, he said.

Israel has continued to seal vital border crossings, and has prevented aid including food from reaching the north.

Israel claimed on Monday that it allowed 30 trucks carrying flour and food from the UN’s main food agency to travel through the northern crossing after inspection. The UN has not confirmed the statement.

It was unclear where the aid went because the UN says trucks travelling through that crossing do not go directly to the north.

Gaza’s Government Media Office has refuted the claim, saying Israel’s “lies” about allowing trucks in are completely false.

In a statement, the office said the Israeli army has continued to prevent trucks from reaching northern Gaza, including Gaza City.

“A siege and complete lockdown on the area has been ongoing for 170 days,” the office said, adding that more than 342 people have been killed in the north since the latest assault began 10 days ago.

“What is happening in northern Gaza is a genocide … the destruction of homes, entire neighbourhoods, infrastructure, schools, hospitals, mosques” is part of a plan to cleanse the area of its inhabitants, it said.

The cutoff, combined with the renewed offensive, has raised fears that Israel is pursuing an extreme plan proposed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that would besiege the northern third of the Gaza Strip in an effort to prompt a Hamas surrender.

Israel has also continued to bombard other parts of the besieged enclave on Monday.

Early on Monday, Israeli forces struck a tent encampment housing displaced families outside of Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah. At least four people were killed, and dozens were wounded as a fire ignited.

Videos shared on social media showed rescuers scrambling to save people as they struggled to contain the fire.

Israeli forces have repeatedly attacked medical facilities and shelters in Gaza since the assault began in October of last year. In recent months, they have repeatedly struck crowded shelters and tent sites, alleging armed groups were using them – without providing evidence.

Mohammed Tahir, a surgeon on his third medical mission to Gaza at Al-Aqsa Hospital, said he was in the operating room when he heard the blasts on the nearby school-turned-shelter early on Monday.

Tahir told Al Jazeera that the hospital was “inundated” with casualties, with women, children and men “dying in front of our eyes”.

While in the operating room, he said another bombing happened within the grounds of the hospital.

Tahir said it is “beyond any rationale that a hospital can be attacked in such a grave manner”.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi repeated calls for a ceasefire, saying it is the “only way to break the cycle of violence, of hatred, of misery”.