Gaza, Nov 2;Ā Israeli forces killed another Hamas commander on Wednesday in their second strike on Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp in two days, the military said, as the first group of civilian evacuees from the besieged enclave crossed into Egypt.Pressing an offensive against Hamas militants, Israel again bombed the densely populated Gaza Strip from land, sea and air in its campaign to wipe out the Islamist group after its deadly cross-border rampage into southern Israel on Oct. 7.
Palestinians sifted through rubble in a desperate hunt for trapped victims after Israel’s strike on Jabalia, Gaza’s largest refugee camp.
“It is a massacre,” said one witness of the strike.
The Israeli military said its fighter jets struck a Hamas command and control complex in Jabalia “based on precise intelligence,” killing the head of the Islamist group’s anti-tank missile unit, Muhammad A’sar.
“Hamas deliberately builds its terror infrastructure under, around and within civilian buildings, intentionally endangering Gazan civilians,” an Israeli statement said.
United Nations human rights officials said the operation could be a war crime.
“Given the high number of civilian casualties & the scale of destruction following Israeli air strikes on Jabalia refugee camp, we have serious concerns that these are disproportionate attacks that could amount to war crimes,” the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights wrote on social media site X.
There were no immediate figures from Gaza authorities on casualties from the explosion at the camp on Wednesday. Palestinian health officials said the first Israeli airstrike on Tuesday killed about 50 people and wounded 150.
Israel said Tuesday’s strike killed Ibrahim Biari, who it described as a ringleader of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Israel and Jordan on Friday, the State Department said. He will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for an update on Israel’s military objectives, it said.
Dr. Fathi Abu al-Hassan, a U.S. passport holder waiting to cross into Egypt, described hellish conditions inside Gaza without water, food or shelter.
“We open our eyes on dead people and we close our eyes on dead people,” he said while waiting to cross into Egypt.
“If this happened in any other country … even in the desert, (people) will combine together to (help) us,” he said.
People evacuated to Egypt, trapped in Gaza since war began on Oct. 7, included passport holders from Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
They were driven through the Rafah border crossing and underwent security checks, officials said.