UN chief calls for ‘immediate ceasefire’ in Gaza as 35,000 Palestinians killed | Israeli War on Gaza News

Israeli forces are launching further attacks on the Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the Gaza Strip while increasing pressure on Rafah in the south.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has renewed his call for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip as Israeli forces have killed more than 35,000 Palestinians in the besieged territory since attacks began in October, officials say.

In a video address to international donors gathered in Kuwait on Sunday, Guterres also called for “the unconditional release of all prisoners held by Hamas as well as an immediate increase in humanitarian assistance” to Gaza.

“A ceasefire will be just the beginning,” he said in the video, warning that “it will be a long road back from the devastation and trauma of this war.”

As Guterres repeated his appeal, Israeli forces attacked several points in the Gaza Strip, once again displacing hundreds of thousands of refugees who had already fled the war. Israeli tanks rolled into Jabalia, while multiple attacks killed dozens of people in Beit Lahiya in the north and Rafah in the south.

The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that at least 12 bodies arrived at Kamal Adwan Hospital in the city of Beit Lahiya after the so-called Israeli “carpet bombing.”

Emad Oudeh, a resident of Beit Lahiya, told Al Jazeera they did not know where to go as Israeli attacks increased. “We are shocked. We don’t know what to do. We are physically and mentally exhausted. We’re about to go crazy.”

Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, said Israeli tanks had begun “penetrating deeper into the Jabalia refugee camp.”

Jabalia is the largest of Gaza’s eight refugee camps and is home to more than 100,000 people, most of them descendants of Palestinians expelled from towns and villages in modern-day Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that led to the camp’s creation State of Israel.

“We heard from eyewitnesses on the ground in this very densely populated area that military tanks were surrounding evacuation centers and residential buildings,” Abu Azzoum said.

Those fleeing Israeli bombardment are also struggling with acute shortages of food and medical supplies in the areas where they have sought refuge.

Mahmoud Basal of the Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza said there was no longer any medical care or humanitarian assistance for displaced people in the northern part of the Gaza Strip.

“We have lost 80 percent of our capabilities and no one is responding to the appeals we make to international institutions,” the civil defense spokesman said in a statement.

Imad Abu Zayda, an emergency doctor in Jabalia, told Al Jazeera that most of the injured who came to his hospital were women and children, describing the situation as dire.

“We work with minimal facilities. Due to the lack of fuel, there is no light and there is no medical care as Israel has expanded its activities in the region. We don’t have oxygen to give to patients,” he said.

“No safe place in Gaza”

In the center of the Gaza Strip, the Civil Defense Authority reported at least two people dead, a father and a son, both doctors, in an Israeli attack in Deir el-Balah on Sunday.

Further south in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city on the border with Egypt, the Kuwaiti hospital says it has received the bodies of 18 people killed in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, gave a similar estimate of “around 300,000 people” having fled Rafah in the past week, denouncing in a post “in Gaza.”

Palestinians in Rafah, many displaced by fighting elsewhere in the area, piled water tanks, mattresses and other belongings onto vehicles and prepared to flee again.

“The artillery shelling didn’t stop at all for several days,” said Mohammed Hamad, 24, who left eastern Rafah for the west of the city. “There is no safe place in Gaza where we can seek refuge.”

Residents were told to head to the “humanitarian zone” of al-Mawasi, on the coast northwest of Rafah, despite aid agencies warning it was unprepared for an influx of people.

However, EU chief Charles Michel said on social media that Rafah civilians were being sent to “unsafe zones,” calling it “unacceptable.”