Gaza death toll surpasses 9,000 as Israel strikes refugee camp again

The war between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, is closing in on the Gaza Strip’s main population centre as the death toll continues to mount.

On Tuesday, dozens of people died after an Israeli strike targeting a Hamas commander hit the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza.

The Jabalya refugee camp is said to be the largest refugee camp in Gaza, home to thousands of civilians sheltering from the conflict.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said 50 people were killed and 150 wounded. But a nearby hospital said it received 400 casualties, including 120 dead.

A fresh round of bombardment intensified on Thursday morning after 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 Israel on October 7.

Bashar Mourad, director of the Al Quds hospital in Gaza City where up to 14,000 displaced people are reportedly sheltering, told CNN that the air strikes were “getting closer to the hospital”.

Gaza’s health ministry said the death toll in the city has risen to 9,061 people, including 3,760 children.

Nearly 2,600 reports of missing people, including 1,150 children missing or buried under the rubble, have been filed, the ministry added.

Israel had accused Hamas of always “hiding, as they do, behind civilians” and asked residents of the city to flee.

However, Palestinians and hundreds of foreign nationals only started crossing into Egypt on Wednesday.