The humanitarian crisis in the northern Gaza Strip deepened on Saturday as an Israeli bombardment killed at least 20 people, trapped thousands more and prompted one of the area’s last functioning hospitals to issue desperate pleas for assistance.

Israeli airstrikes overnight and into Saturday hit the Jabaliya area of northern Gaza, even as the Israeli military is also pressing ahead with its campaign in Lebanon, where it warned residents of 23 more towns to evacuate on Saturday.

Roughly 400,000 people remain in northern Gaza, according to the United Nations, and many have been trapped in their ruined neighbourhoods by Israeli airstrikes, which the military says are targeting Hamas and other allied groups.

Doctors Without Borders said in a statement late Friday that five of its staff members were trapped in Jabaliya, and that one of them had relayed that “about 20 people” were killed in an airstrike on Al-Yemen Al-Saeed Hospital. The Palestinian health ministry said that at least 49 people had been killed across Gaza since Friday, and that 219 wounded people had arrived at hospitals in the enclave.

Israel’s military has issued evacuation warnings for the area in recent days, but aid workers said the fighting made it difficult to follow those instructions.

“Nobody is allowed to get in or out,” Sarah Vuylsteke, a project coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, said in the group’s statement. “Anyone who tries is getting shot.”

Jabaliya was once a large town with an adjoining refugee camp, composed of dense urban dwellings, that shared its name. But it has largely been destroyed by ground combat and repeated Israeli bombardments of the area since the war began last year after the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel.

This past week, the Israeli military issued an evacuation order for the area, and a new one was issued on Saturday morning. Avichay Adraee, the military’s Arabic-language spokesman, said on X that the military was “operating with great force” against Hamas and other allied groups, “and will continue to do so for a long period of time”.

“The designated area, including the shelters located there, is considered a dangerous combat zone,” he added.

Jonathan Crickx, a spokesman for Unicef in the Palestinian territories, described Israel’s evacuation order in northern Gaza as “extremely concerning”, because it explicitly warned that shelters would not be safe and included sites like Kamal Adwan Hospital.

New York Times News Service