Israel expands northern Gaza attacks to Beit Lahia as rescue efforts at standstill

Israel has killed 22 people across the Gaza Strip, expanding its assault on northern Gaza to include the town of Beit Lahia, an area of Gaza that had been heavily bombed since the beginning of the Israeli onslaught in October 2023.

Early on Thursday, Israeli forces killed at least 14 people in northern Gaza, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Six people were killed by Israeli shelling west of the Jabalia camp, while three others were killed by an Israeli drone in Beit Lahia project's market street, local sources told the agency.

Another five people were killed and others wounded when Israeli forces bombed the Al-Asi family home in Beit Lahia project.

Many dead and wounded are still believed to be trapped under the rubble, with rescue teams having ceased operations due to being targeted by Israel.

Gaza's Civil Defence said on Thursday that its operations remained suspended in the north for a sixteenth day.

The Israeli assault has also included attacks on hospitals and shelters, and abductions of medical personnel, with facilities housing newborn babies targeted.

"The Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza has become a besieged war zone," UNICEF Middle East and North Africa said in a post on X on Thursday.

"The last neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) remaining in the north has been damaged in heavy attacks in recent days. In the past year, 4,000 babies have been cut off from lifesaving newborn care because of sustained attacks on the hospitals."

Gaza's ministry of health has called on citizens remaining in the north to donate blood, and urged the UN and international bodies to intervene to facilitate medical aid and the transporting of wounded people.

The Israeli army has killed over 1,800 Palestinians since launching a renewed assault on northern Gaza in early October. It has also forcibly displaced tens of thousands of Palestinians from northern Gaza, forcing them to move south.

Israel has been accused of implementing the so-called 'General's Plan' for the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza  — a claim that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to deny publicly.

On Tuesday, Israeli army Brigadier General Itzik Cohen told reporters that residents of northern Gaza would not be allowed to return home, in what appeared to be the first admission that Israel was ethnically cleansing the north.