Palestinians gather as they register for medical check ups at a health center run by United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, October 29, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

A single Israeli air strike on a residential block left nearly 100 dead on Tuesday (October 29, 2024), Gaza’s civil defence agency said, as Israel faced criticism after its parliament voted to ban the key UN aid agency working in the Palestinian territory.

Palestinian rescuers and family members were scouring through the rubble of the demolished five-storey block in Beit Lahia in the north of Gaza, near the Jabalia area where an Israeli operation is underway to root out remaining pockets of Hamas fighters.

A charred body with long hair hung out of an upper storey window and corpses wrapped in blankets were lined up in the street below, as stunned relatives sought to identify the dead.

“The number of martyrs in the massacre of the Abu Nasr family home in Beit Lahia has risen to 93 martyrs, and about 40 are still missing under the rubble,” Gaza civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

The Israeli military said it was “looking into the reports” of the strike in Beit Lahia, having earlier reported that its ground and air forces had killed 40 Hamas fighters and lost four of its own soldiers in combat.

‘Women and children’

“The explosion happened at night and I first thought it was shelling, but when I went out after sunrise I saw people pulling bodies, limbs and the wounded from under the rubble,” said Rabie al-Shandagly, 30, who had taken refuge in a nearby school in Beit Lahia.

“Most of the victims are women and children, and people are trying to save the injured, but there are no hospitals or proper medical care,” he told AFP.

The Israeli military has been conducted a sweeping air and ground assault in northern Gaza since October 6 — particularly Jabalia, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun — in what it describes as an operation to prevent Hamas from regrouping.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been forced to flee the area, many of them not for the first time, after more than 12 months of fierce combat in the densely populated territory unleashed after Hamas militants launched a bloody cross-border assault into Israel on October 7 last year.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 43,020 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable, triggering warnings of a humanitarian catastrophe.

Israel’s ban on United Nations aid agency

International concerns soared further on Tuesday (October 29, 2024) after the Israeli parliament voted overwhelmingly to ban the main United Nations aid agency working with Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Lawmakers also passed a measure prohibiting Israeli officials from working with UNRWA and its employees.

Israel strictly controls all humanitarian aid shipments to Gaza, and UNRWA has provided essential aid, schooling and healthcare across the Palestinian territories and in the diaspora for more than seven decades.