GAZA (Palestine Foundation Information Center) The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has said that Israeli forces stormed UNRWA schools used as shelter centers in Jabalia, north of Gaza, and embarked on killing and detaining dozens of civilians, while thousands were forced to flee under non-stop aerial and artillery bombardment.
In a report on Monday, Euro-Med said that its field team had been following the Israeli army’s expansion of its attack on Jabalia and its refugee camp since last Saturday, May 11, a few hours after the army issued evacuation orders and launched intense bombardment.
According to Euro-Med, its field team documented Israeli airstrikes on a residential block in Jabalia refugee camp containing several homes belonging to the families of Nayrab, Abu Lihiya, Khalil and Atallah, amid reports of victims under the rubble of buildings.
Israeli forces with tanks and quadcopters besieged, amid intense artillery shelling and gunfire, six UNRWA schools sheltering thousands of displaced civilians in al-Madares street in Jabalia camp.
However, before those forces arrived at the schools, thousands of civilians had to escape from this street, under non-stop bombardment and shooting, without taking most of their belongings.
Euro-Med also said that it received preliminary information about the killing of at least 32 civilians in Israeli attacks in Jabalia and its camp, in addition to the presence of several victims inside the UNRWA schools, which Israeli forces attacked before storming them.
Euro-Med explained that Israeli forces detained dozens of civilians during its raids on the schools and then embarked on forcing them to strip and torturing them, adding that at least one civilian identified as Issa Hammouda was tortured to death after his detention.
The Euro-Med field team accused the Israeli forces in Jabalia of targeting ambulance and rescue crews and preventing them from evacuating casualties from shelter schools and the areas around them as well as from bombed homes.
The field team also reported the exposure of all the neighborhoods and streets of Jabalia and its camp to intensive aerial and artillery attacks aimed at creating a coercive environment for the Palestinian citizens to force them to leave the shelters and homes they live in.
Euro-Med highlighted that the escalating attack on northern Gaza is part of a wider military escalation across the coastal enclave, particularly in az-Zeitoun neighborhood in the southeast of Gaza City and in the southern Gazan City of Rafah, where a week-long ground invasion has resulted in forced relocation orders, amid persistent bombing along the Egyptian border and in Rafah’s western areas.
As the border crossings remain closed with the Israeli army not allowing in aid and fuel shipments, the entire health and humanitarian system in Gaza have almost collapsed, while hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to evacuate from Rafah to Khan Yunis — where there is already an acute scarcity of water and food supplies.
“The international community must intervene swiftly and decisively to stop all Israeli military attacks on various parts of the Gaza Strip that target civilians and civilian objects directly, systematically, on a large scale, and in a recurring pattern, and to stop Israel’s crime of genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” Euro-Med underlined.
