CNN
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An Israeli airstrike on a multi-storey building in northern Gaza killed at least 27 people, aid officials said, as the Israeli army issued new evacuation orders in the area, where it is mounting a major offensive.

According to Gaza Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Basal, the Mbahouh family’s home in Jabalya was hit on Thursday afternoon.

He said the four-story building housed more than 50 displaced people, with some trapped in a warehouse at the bottom of the building.

CNN contacts the Israeli military about the target of the attack.

Also on Thursday, the Al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City was hit by an Israeli airstrike. Another killed at least four people at Al-Rimal school, west of Gaza City, Basal said.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed the airstrike on the Al-Shati refugee camp, claiming the school was being used by Hamas as a “command and control center.” The IDF said it would not comment on the second attack without coordinates.

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since the October 7 Hamas-led attacks has destroyed entire neighborhoods and made large parts of the strip uninhabitable.

At least 43,469 Palestinians have been killed and another 102,561 people injured in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry.

Human rights groups warned of “apocalyptic” survival challenges for Palestinians trapped in Jabalya, home to a large refugee camp, where the Israeli army stepped up air and ground strikes in early October that it says are aimed at Hamas’ renewed presence in the area .

The British-based NGO Medical Aid for Palestinians accused Israel of “making impossible Palestinian survival in northern Gaza as part of a policy of sustained pressure and forced eviction,” in a statement to CNN on Monday.

Israeli airstrikes and shelling have killed at least 30 people in Gaza since Wednesday. Most of those Palestinians were killed by Israeli strikes in the Beit Lahiya area of ​​northern Gaza.

An Israeli airstrike hit a residential building in Beit Lahiya’s Mashrou neighborhood, killing six people and wounding several others, journalists and medics said, adding that another six people were killed in a second attack in the same area. Four others were killed in a separate drone strike in Beit Lahiya, they said.

In addition, according to local journalists, six people had been killed as a result of Israeli artillery shelling west of the Jabalya camp in northern Gaza.

The head of the field hospitals in Gaza, Dr. Marwan Al-Hams, told CNN on Thursday that the “health situation in the north is more than catastrophic… Three hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip are out of service and we cannot perform operations. ”

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that “troops began operating in the Beit Lahiya area following prior intelligence information and a situational assessment that indicated the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure.”

The IDF said it is also continuing operations in Jabalya in northern Gaza and has killed some “50 terrorists” in the past day.

An aid worker displaced in Gaza City spoke of the mental anguish he experiences as he is driven from one neighborhood to another after the Israeli army issued new evacuation orders to Palestinians in northern Gaza on Thursday.

Mahmoud Shalabi, MAP’s deputy program director, said he has been forced to flee at least seven times since October 2023 – including from northern Gaza to Gaza City. Shalabi’s testimony was shared with CNN by MAP.

“I’m really not sure I’ll be able to see my house again. And even if I am allowed to go back, will our houses remain as they are?” he said Thursday. “It’s like a new Nakba.

“We are being forced to flee our homes under brutal force,” he added. “My three children keep asking me: ‘When are we going home?’ And I really can’t answer that question.

“To exist on this land means to resist,” Shalabi said. ‘I’m not leaving. I want to live a dignified life.”

Arab army spokesman Avichay Adraee posted on

Adraee said the “specified area has been warned several times before. We inform you that the indicated area is considered a dangerous combat zone, so for your safety, head south immediately.”

Elsewhere in central Gaza, Civil Defense said it had recovered eight bodies after an attack in the Al-Nuseirat refugee camp on Wednesday evening, according to a CNN contributor on the ground.

A male witness, Salim Mohammed Alaa Abu Najeh, told CNN that his sister’s house was targeted.

“They were at home when suddenly a rocket hit their building… They have no connection with any organization or anything like that. They were unarmed, poor people with difficult circumstances who struggled to build this house.”

Among those inside the building were orphans who had been raised by their grandmother, Abu Najeh said.

CNN asked the IDF about the target of the attack.

Israeli operations also continue in southern Gaza, where the IDF said Thursday that a “number of armed terrorists” had been killed in the Rafah area.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said paramedics had taken five bodies to hospital as a result of an Israeli drone strike in the Al-Janina neighborhood, east of the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Journalists said four of the dead were from the same family.

In addition, they said, two people were killed in an attack launched from an Israeli military quadcopter.