GAZA – Gaza’s civil defence agency yesterday said it can no longer provide first responder services in the north of the territory, accusing Israeli forces of threatening to “bomb and kill” its crews.

Since 6 October, the Israeli military has mounted a sweeping air and land assault on north Gaza, initially focused on the Jabalia area, describing it as an operation aimed at preventing Hamas militants from regrouping.

“We are unable to provide humanitarian services to citizens in the northern governorate of the Gaza Strip due to threats from Israeli occupation forces, who have threatened to kill and bomb our teams if they remain inside Jabalia camp”, the agency’s spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

Bassal said its first responders “have been targeted” on several occasions, leaving “several members injure, and others left bleeding on the streets, with no one to rescue them”. Bassal published a photograph of a burnt truck on social media, explaining that it was “the only civil defence vehicle in the northern Gaza Strip governorate”, which includes Gaza City.

Bassal wrote that the truck was “targeted by the Israeli army” in the northern city of Beit Lahia, just north of Jabalia and near Gaza’s northern border with Israel.
The Israeli army yesterday said it was continuing operations in the Jabalia area ,and had “eliminated dozens of terrorists”.
The Gaza war began with Hama’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1 206 people on Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has until now killed at least 42 792 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which the United Nations has described as reliable. – Nampa/AFP