Israeli invasion of the northern Gaza Strip: Stray dogs eat the dead on the streets, says the head of the rescue service

Editor’s note: This story contains graphic material that some readers may find disturbing.

CNN
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Bodies strewn across dusty streets, entire streets destroyed by Israeli attacks, people starving. This is the picture painted by the head of the emergency services in the Jabalya region in northern Gaza.

“You can see the signs of hunger among the people in the northern Gaza Strip,” Fares Afana, the head of emergency services in the northern Gaza Strip, told CNN by telephone on Monday. “Israeli forces destroy anything that represents life or signs of life.”

Afana told CNN that he and his colleagues had obtained the bodies of Palestinians killed in northern Gaza, some of which showed signs of animal scavenging, complicating efforts to identify the deceased.

“Hungry stray dogs are eating these bodies on the streets… This makes it difficult for us to identify the bodies,” he said.

He shared a photo with CNN showing the remains of a little boy whose body he said was eaten by stray dogs.

Afana said “thousands of children” and pregnant women were stuck in the besieged area, where the Israeli military has carried out air and ground strikes in three quarters over the past 12 days.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) say it is targeting Hamas’ renewed presence there.

At least 50,000 people have been displaced from the Jabalya region, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported on Sunday. The 400,000 who remain in northern Gaza are ravaged by hunger and subjected to thunderous bombardment.

The United Nations has accused the Israeli military of giving residents of the northern Gaza Strip a choice between starvation or resettlement.

“Civilians have no choice but to either starve or leave,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), said in a statement on Monday. “Too many red lines have been crossed in Gaza. What could constitute war crimes can still be prevented.”

The Israeli agency that manages the flow of aid to Gaza said 30 trucks entered the north on Monday, stressing that Israel “does not prevent the entry of humanitarian aid.”

Afana said Israeli forces on Monday fired on hungry residents searching for food at a camp relief center run by UNRWA. “The situation is getting worse,” he said.

UNRWA said at least 10 people were reportedly killed and another 40 injured in an artillery attack on its food distribution center in Jabalya on Monday.

CNN has reached out to the IDF for comment.

“It is also very dangerous for the medics to reach this area… due to the blasted roads and direct fire from the Israeli military on our vehicles,” Afana said.

He said ambulances were hit by shrapnel from Israeli artillery near the Yemen al-Sa’eed hospital in Jabalya, and shared a video of the aftermath that showed an ambulance with crushed tires and bullet marks.

“What is happening in northern Gaza is a real genocide,” he added. “We can’t do our job normally.”

CNN asked the IDF about Afana’s claims that the Israeli military fired on emergency vehicles.

At least 342 Palestinians have been killed in parts of the northern Gaza Strip since Israeli operations began earlier this month, Gaza’s government media office reported on Monday, adding that hundreds of “civilians, children and women” were injured. At least 17 people were killed in northern Gaza on Tuesday, according to the Gaza Civil Defense.

Israeli bulldozers in Jabalya have turned parts of the once-bustling refugee camp into a maze of destroyed streets, according to a resident of the besieged neighborhood.

“The scenes, sounds and smells of the invasion are extremely violent,” Abdul Karim Al-Zuwaidi, a journalist with Al Ghad TV, told CNN in a voice message on Tuesday. In one of several voice notes CNN heard, the sound of a bombardment could be heard overhead.

“The question is, where and how can people go?” added the 23-year-old Palestinian. “The place where they remain despite all the destruction consists of simple tents that they have built from the rubble of their homes. Where will people go?”

Al-Zuwaidi accused the Israeli military of firing on civilians trying to flee the north at the Abu Sharkh roundabout in Jabalya, as CNN and others have previously reported. CNN reached out to the IDF at the time for comment.

Before the war, children lined the streets of the Jabalya refugee camp and families gathered to celebrate Islamic holidays, including Ramadan, Al-Zuwaidi recalled.

“The Jabalya camp was very beautiful, full of local markets and full of people. It was peaceful and safe,” he added. “Now the camp is just ashes.

“We used to sit there in the alleys, play with the children and organize activities and parties for the children… These are memories that you can never relive.”