Israel’s 24-day siege, attacks kill 1,000-plus civilians in northern Gaza

The Gaza Strip’s chief of civil defense says the Israeli regime’s intensified attacks on the northern part of the coastal sliver has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, so far.

Mahmoud Basal made the remarks to Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen television network on Sunday, the 24th day of a concerted military operation by the regime against the areas.

Describing the most recent developments in the operation, he said, “The occupation bombed a school in al-Shati Refugge Camp for the fifth time, and there are martyrs under the rubble.”

“The occupation is preventing civil defense teams from entering [the city of] Beit Lahia in the northern part of the strip to rescue the wounded trapped under the rubble,” he added.

Basal said many people had gone missing since the launch of the operation, which he described as a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

“The occupation deliberately destroys more than one building in each airstrike to cause the highest number of martyrs,” the official said, adding that the regime “kills anyone who attempts to provide services to the residents of northern Gaza.”

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According to Basal, the regime has brought more than 100,000 Palestinians in Beit Lahia and the nearby cities of Jabalia and Beit Hanoun under complete siege and  bombardment as part of the operation.

Enforcing the siege, the regime has prevented the targeted areas from receiving as much as “a drop of water or a loaf of bread.”

The regime embarked on implementing a so-called “generals’ plan” in northern Gaza earlier in the month, deploying hundreds of military vehicles and thousands of forces with immense firepower towards its realization.

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Israel has waged a massive campaign of death and destruction in northern Gaza since early October.

The plan seeks to tighten the regime’s siege against the areas, cut off humanitarian aid to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians inside, and label those who remain there as combatants so it could target and kill them after declaring the areas "closed military zones.”

The campaign is taking place as part of a genocidal war that the regime launched on Gaza last October, during which it has killed close to 43,000 Palestinians so far.

On October 16, however, the Gaza-based resistance movement Hamas released a statement, asserting that the campaign was “doomed to failure,” and that it “will shatter against the rock of the firmness, will, and steadfastness of our patient people, and the valor and courage of our heroic resistance.”

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