At least 22 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli missile strike that targeted a residential block in Gaza’s Jabalia located in the north of the Gaza Strip.
A separate strike also killed three Palestinians in the Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City.
A statement from the Ministry of Health in Gaza said the Israeli army carried out four “massacres” against families on Friday, with a total of 61 being killed and 234 wounded.
The death toll comes as the Israeli military issued a forced evacuation order for north Gaza, telling residents of Jabalia to move south of the enclave.
Hamas denounced the strikes on Friday, with a statement from them saying the “massacres are a continuation of the ongoing criminal genocide against our people, shielded by American support.”
They added that the attack was an attempt to “punish the population for their resilience and rejection of displacement”, referring to the Palestinians who refused to follow evacuation orders and remain home instead of being forcibly displaced.
The Palestinian Wafa news agency said that Israeli fighter jets bombed a multistorey apartment tower at night, hitting four inhabited homes.
At least 14 people remain missing and are believed to be buried under the rubble, Wafa said.
According to Al Jazeera correspondents on the ground, “powerful explosions” were heard in the north of the Strip at the time and many casualties were “arriving at the hospital either in pieces or soaked in blood”.
The strike comes as hospitals in the north have been reported as being close to running out of fuel and equipment.
On Friday, the director general of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus there were almost no health services left in northern Gaza.
In a post on X, he said that Israel had prevented two WHO missions from reaching north Gaza.
In the post he called on Israel to stop the forced displacement orders and to stop attacks on hospitals.
“There is almost no health services left in northern Gaza, people have no where left to go” the post read, adding that Israel should “facilitate humanitarian aid missions, because lives depend on them”.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 42,175 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded over 98,336 others. The bombardment has levelled entire neighbourhoods and plunged the Strip into a deep humanitarian crisis.
