CAIRO – At least 60 Palestinians were killed and dozens others wounded in an Israeli strike on a residential building in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya on Oct 29, according to the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service.

       Mr Marwan Al-Hams, an official at the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run enclave, said 17 other people were missing, but they would already be counted as dead.

       Some 150 people were wounded, he added.

       Medics said 20 children were among the dead.

       There was no immediate comment from Israel.

       Video footage obtained by Reuters showed several bodies wrapped in blankets on the ground outside a bombed four-storey building.

       More bodies and survivors were being retrieved from under the rubble, as neighbours rushed to help with the rescue.

       “There are tens of martyrs (dead). Tens of displaced people were living in this house. The house was bombed without prior warning. As you can see, martyrs are here and there, with body parts hanging on the walls,” Mr Ismail Ouaida, an eyewitness who was helping to recover bodies, said in the video.

       On Oct 28, the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said around 100,000 people were marooned in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun without medical or food supplies.

       The Health Ministry said those wounded in the Oct 29 strike could not receive care, as doctors were forced to evacuate the nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital.

       “Critical cases without intervention will succumb to their destiny and die,” it said in a statement.

       The emergency service said its operations came to a halt because of the three-week Israeli assault into northern Gaza, where Israel said it wiped out Hamas combat forces earlier in the year-long war.

       The war in Gaza began on Oct 7, 2023, when the Palestinian militant group Hamas stormed southern Israel, killing 1,200 Israelis and taking more than 250 hostages.

       Israel invaded Gaza in response, and its operations there has already left some 43,000 Palestinians dead.

       Gaza’s war has kindled a wider conflict in the Middle East, with Israel bombing Lebanon and sending forces into its south to disable the Iran-backed group Hezbollah, a Hamas ally.

       The strike on Oct 29 came a day after Israel’s Parliament passed a law to ban the UN relief agency UNRWA from operating inside Israel, alarming some of Israel’s Western allies who fear it will worsen the already dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.

       Israeli officials cited the involvement of a handful of UNRWA staffers in the Oct 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack, and a few employees’ membership in Hamas and other armed groups.

       UNRWA’s General Commissioner Philippe Lazzarini described the move as “collective punishment”.

       It was unclear yet how the decision will impact the lives of Palestinians, especially in Gaza, where the United Nations said most of its 2.3 million people have become internally displaced since the war erupted over a year ago. REUTERS