In the Gazan neighborhood, hit by airstrikes, death and despair reign
A day after an Israeli airstrike ripped through a densely populated neighborhood in the Gaza Strip, Palestinians trying to reach relatives there to learn their fate were largely met with unnerving silence.
Sometimes phones would ring and go unanswered. Other times, callers were greeted with a somber recorded message: “Contact with the beloved Gaza Strip was lost due to the ongoing aggression,” a voice said. “May God protect Gaza and its people.”
“This is getting crazier every day,” Yousef Hammash, a Norwegian Refugee Council worker who was born in the Jabaliya neighborhood hit by the airstrike, said on Wednesday.
Mr. Hammash, who is now seeking refuge in southern Gaza, said persistent communications disruptions exponentially increased the anguish of living amid hardship and death.
Sousan Hammad, 38, a writer and teacher in Brooklyn, said she was frantically trying to reach relatives in Jabaliya. Her father had grown up in Gaza, and in recent days she had been able to keep in touch with his side of the family and relay their messages to relatives in the United States.
Then came the airstrike, which the Israeli military said killed a Hamas leader who helped plan the Oct. 7 attack that killed more than 1,400 people in Israel, as well as a network of Hamas tunnels they say were under the residential area.
Ms Hammad’s last WhatsApp messages to her cousin Ahmed, 31, who told her he was hosting dozens of people in a four-bedroom apartment, remained unread.
“I still haven’t heard from him,” she said. “It’s terrible; I’m assuming the worst and I don’t know what to do except wait.”
On Wednesday, the devastated neighborhood where local officials said dozens were killed and hundreds injured in Tuesday’s attack – the figures could not be independently confirmed – was hit again. Gaza’s Interior Ministry reported that another Israeli attack had killed and injured “a number of people.”
Videos verified by The New York Times captured the aftermath of an airstrike on Wednesday in Jabaliya’s Falluja neighborhood, about half a mile from the site of Tuesday’s attack. The destruction shown is of a similar scale, with several large buildings completely razed to the ground. Rescue workers and residents can be seen digging through the rubble, apparently carrying injured and dead people, including children.
The Israeli military confirmed to CNN that Wednesday’s explosion in Jabaliya’s Falluja neighborhood was caused by an airstrike. “Earlier today, acting on accurate intelligence, IDF fighter jets struck a Hamas command and control complex in Jabaliya. We can confirm that Hamas terrorists were neutralized during the attack.”
An IDF spokesman, contacted by The Times, said he was not aware of the statement to CNN.
Broken communications made it difficult to reach survivors, doctors or rescue crews on Wednesday to gauge the toll in Jabaliya, northern Gaza. Two of the Gaza Strip’s largest telecommunications providers said lines appeared to be down again, as they had been for 34 hours after Israel began its ground invasion on Friday.
On Wednesday, parts of the community were a scene of destruction and despair. Gaza’s Interior Ministry said the strike had destroyed an entire residential block. The night before, images showed rows of bodies in shrouds lined up outside a nearby hospital.
A resident of Jabaliya, Ameen Abed, 35, said on Wednesday that he heard a rapid series of four powerful explosions the day before around 4pm. The air filled with debris and the ground shook.
“There’s just the smell of corpses and gunpowder,” he said.
The attack on Jabaliya and the wider death toll have intensified international criticism of Israel’s three-week campaign of airstrikes on Gaza, which followed a Hamas attack that killed more than 1,400 people in Israel, including many civilians.
Local officials in Gaza say more than 8,800 Palestinians have been killed since the conflict began three weeks ago. It has not been possible to independently confirm the claims about victims.
Despite its refugee camp status, Jabaliya is a developed community that houses Palestinians and their descendants who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1940s during the conflict surrounding Israel’s creation.
Mr Hammash, the aid worker, said Tuesday’s airstrike had struck the heart of the tightly packed community.
Israel has blamed Hamas for civilian casualties in Gaza, saying it is using Gazans as human shields. It notes that it has repeatedly warned residents in recent days to evacuate northern Gaza.
But many who left found they were still under the gun, and rights experts said advising civilians to leave did not mean Israel could strike at its discretion.
“Issuing warnings does not absolve parties of the obligation to protect civilians,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “Citizens who do not evacuate,” he said, still need to be protected.
Mr. Abed, a resident of Jabaliya, also rejected Israel’s justifications.
“Even if there were a military leader in the area,” he said, “the Israeli army has no justification for bombing a densely populated area.”
Jabaliya is a stronghold for the militants, according to Israeli officials.
But it is also a home to the 116,000 Palestinians registered to live in the 1.4 square kilometer area.
They are among the millions of Palestinians still classified as refugees by the United Nations after decades of exile. Israel, which bans Gazans from returning to the country from which they were expelled, objects to the UN definition of Palestinians as refugees in general.
Even before the latest conflict, and the severe shortages of food, water and fuel it caused, conditions were difficult for the residents of Jabaliya. Israel’s sixteen-year blockade of Gaza, also enforced by Egypt, has caused poverty and stagnation. And freedom of movement in and out of Gaza is severely restricted by Israel.
But on the horizon, some residents of Jabaliya can see their ancestral homes, just beyond the fence separating the strip from southern Israel.
Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Gaya Gupta, Iyad Abuheweila, Abu Bakr Bashir, Haley Willis, Ainara Tiefenthaler, Christoph Koettl And Victoria Kim reporting contributed.