Rescuers say halting work in north Gaza after Israel threats

GAZA: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Thursday it can no longer provide first responder services in the north of the territory, accusing Israeli forces of threatening to “bomb and kill” its crews.
Since October 6, the Israeli military has mounted a sweeping air and land assault on north Gaza, initially focused on the Jabalia area, describing it as an operation aimed at preventing Hamas militants from regrouping.
“We are unable to provide humanitarian services to citizens in the northern governorate of the Gaza Strip due to threats from Israeli occupation forces, who have threatened to kill and bomb our teams if they remain inside Jabalia camp,” said Mahmud Bassal, the agency’s spokesman.
First responders had been “targeted” on several occasions, leaving “several members injured, and others are left bleeding on the streets with no one able to rescue them,” he told AFP.
Bassal published a photograph of a burnt truck on social media, saying it was “the only civil defense vehicle in the northern Gaza Strip governorate,” which includes Gaza City.
The truck, he said, was “targeted by the Israeli army” in the northern city of Beit Lahia, just north of Jabalia and near Gaza’s northern border with Israel.
The Israeli army said it was conducting operations in the Jabalia area and had “eliminated dozens of terrorists.”
Military activity in adjacent Beit Lahia has also forced Palestinians to flee, including Raghib Hamuda, who moved his family to Gaza City after Israeli forces issued calls for the evacuation of a shelter last week.
“The military bulldozers demolished the school after evacuating all the displaced people,” he told AFP by phone, adding his family faced “checkpoints and gunfire along the way” to Gaza City, where they found shelter in another school.
“The shelling is intense, and the army has demolished dozens of houses,” he said.
The Israeli army announced it would intensify operations in Gaza’s ravaged north on October 6, with troops even encircling Jabalia and adjacent areas.
Since then, the military has steadily expanded its offensive to other parts in northern Gaza, and Bassal said on Thursday that more than 770 people have been killed so far in the assault.
He said the toll is expected to rise as the military operation continues in the area and “there are people still buried in the rubble.”
The stated goal of the military’s overall assault it says is to destroy the operational capabilities Hamas is trying to rebuild in the north.
It has repeatedly told people to evacuate, and to do so they must pass through army-manned checkpoints.
Images posted online and verified by AFP show crowds of Palestinians waiting to cross such checkpoints often supported by tanks, while several Palestinians reported mistreatment or detention during the process.
The UN refugee agency, UNRWA, says 400,000 people remain in Gaza’s north including Gaza City, and that within the governorate, tens of thousands have fled the northernmost areas subject to intensified Israeli operations, most to Gaza City.
The Israeli defense ministry body that manages civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, COGAT, says 250,000 people remain in Gaza’s north.
The United States has pressured its ally Israel to allow more aid into north Gaza, saying the amount sent so far has “not been sufficient.”
Israeli officials meanwhile have denied charges Israel was implementing a plan to starve out northern Gaza.
The Gaza war began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has until now killed at least 42,847 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the United Nations has described as reliable.