Palestinian bury bodies of relatives, killed in an Israeli airstrike, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on November 20, 2024. (AFP)

Gaza City, November 21 (RHC)-- Gaza health officials say Israeli forces killed at least 19 Palestinians, including a rescue worker, in the besieged Palestinian territory on Wednesday.  According to medics an Israeli strike on a house in the area of Jabalia in northern Gaza killed at least 12 Palestinians.  Ten people are still missing, they said.  A Palestinian man was also killed in the regime’s tank shelling nearby the house.

The situation on the northern edge of the besieged territory has been described as apocalyptic as the regime’s military has intensified bombardment of residential areas and hospitals and blocked the entry of humanitarian aid to the besieged people for more than 50 days.

Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya—one of three medical facilities barely operational in the area—“was bombed across all its departments without warning,” on Tuesday, said director of the hospital Hussam Abu Safiya.  Israel’s military forces attacked the hospital, Safiya said, as “we were trying to save an injured person in the intensive care unit.”

“Following the arrest of 45 members of the medical and surgical staff and the denial of entry to a replacement team, we are now losing wounded patients daily who could have survived if resources were available,” he said.  Safiya said at least 17 malnourished children arrived at the hospital as a result of food shortages, but the facility lacks the supplies to treat them.

“Unfortunately, food and water are not allowed to enter, and not even a single ambulance is permitted access to the north.”

Residents in the three towns of Jabalia, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza said Israeli forces had blown up dozens of houses.  Palestinian officials, witnesses and journalists say Israel has stepped up a campaign of ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza.

The body of a rescue worker killed in an Israeli airstrike is being carried for burial in Gaza City on November 20, 2024. (AFP)
In Gaza City, an Israeli air strike targeted a rescue worker during a rescue operation, killing one staff member of the Palestinian civil emergency service and wounding three others.  In the nearby Zeitoun neighborhood an Israeli strike on a house killed two people, medics said.

Israeli forces have killed nearly 44, 000 Palestinians in the populated coastal strip in more than 13 months, according to health officials.

Officials however say thousands of people still remain unaccounted for; either missing under the rubble, buried hastily in side streets or decomposing in areas that can't be safely reached.