Civil protection in the Gaza Strip announced overnight Friday to Saturday that at least 33 people were killed when Israel’s armed forces launched fresh shelling at the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern part of the small Palestinian enclave, where war continues to rage. has raged for over a year.

“The number of victims (…) amounts to 33 dead and dozens injured,” said Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the civil protection, an organization that reports to the government of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.

A medical source at the Al-Awda hospital told AFP a little earlier that “22 dead and 70 wounded” were treated at the emergency center of the health structure after a bombardment aimed at the Tal az Za’atar sector of the refugee camp in Jabalia.

Asked by AFP about the bombing and the targets, the Israeli military had no immediate comment; a spokesman said only that the army was in the process of “verifying”.

On October 6, the Israeli armed forces launched a new operation in the area of ​​the city and the refugee camp, north of Gaza City, saying that the target was Hamas fighters, who they said were trying to regroup.

This zone, already ravaged by hostilities, damaged even more after the new bombings, had already turned into a theater of fierce battles twice since the outbreak of the war, which was triggered by the attack of the Palestinian Islamist movement on the southern part of the Israeli territory on October 7, 2023.

Hundreds of people have been killed in Jabalia since October 6, according to figures from Hamas’ health ministry in the Gaza Strip.

Last night, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that the situation is “increasingly precarious and dangerous” for “civilians in the northern (Gaza) Strip” as “families (…) try to survive in terrible conditions, under intense bombardment”.