BEIRUT — Palestinians in northern Gaza described heavy Israeli bombardment Saturday in the hours after airstrikes killed at least 22 people, as Israel continued to tell people there and in southern Lebanon to get out of the way of its offensives against the Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups.
In Lebanon, the United Nations peacekeeping force said its headquarters in Naqoura had again been hit, with a peacekeeper struck by gunfire late Friday and in stable condition. It wasn’t clear who fired. The shooting occurred a day after Israel’s military fired on the headquarters for the second straight day. Israel, which has warned the peacekeepers to leave their positions, didn’t immediately respond to questions.
Hunger warnings emerged again as residents in northern Gaza said they hadn’t received aid since the beginning of the month. The U.N. World Food Program said no food aid had entered the north since Oct. 1. An estimated 400,000 people remain there.
Israel’s military renewed its offensive in northern Gaza almost a week ago while escalating its air and ground campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said an Israeli airstrike hit an apartment building in the Zarout coastal area on the edge of Barja south of Beirut, and the Health Ministry said four were killed. The ministry said another airstrike on the village of Maisra northeast of Beirut killed five.
The total toll in Lebanon over the past year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is now 2,255 killed, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Hezbollah continued to fire into Israel.
“We will keep standing with the Lebanese people during these difficult circumstances and also with the Palestinian people,” the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said Saturday while touring the scene of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut.
Gaza residents are trapped
In northern Gaza, residents told The Associated Press many were trapped in their homes and shelters with dwindling supplies while seeing bodies uncollected in the streets as the bombing hampered emergency responders.
Those who rushed to the scene of the latest deadly airstrikes in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya found a hole 20 meters (65 feet) deep where a home once stood.
At least 20 bodies were recovered as of Saturday morning, while others likely were trapped under the rubble, emergency service officials said. Elsewhere in Jabaliya, a strike on a home killed two brothers and wounded a woman and newborn baby, the officials said.
Another strike in the afternoon hit a Jabaliya home and killed at least four people including a woman, said Fares Abu Hamza, an official with the emergency service.
Israel’s military did not immediately respond to request for comment on the strikes. Military spokesperson Avichay Adraee told people in parts of Jabaliya and Gaza City to evacuate south to an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone as Israel plans to use great force “and will continue to do so for a long time.”
Israel has repeatedly returned to parts of Gaza as Hamas and other militants regroup.