Jabalia camp in the Gaza Strip witnessed the most horrific massacre committed by the occupation army, on the 26th night of the continuous Israeli bombing of the besieged Strip.
The Jabalia refugee camp massacre topped the news about the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip, after the occupation army targeted it with six bombs, each weighing a thousand kilograms of explosives, which caused a massive destructive force that appeared in the area, as it was described as “an entire residential square wiped out.”
The recent bombing of Jabalia camp resulted in the death of more than 400 martyrs and wounded, most of them women, according to the Ministry of Interior in Gaza, while Palestinian television reported that about 100 were martyred in the bombing, while dozens of others were injured.
The occupation army claimed in a statement that it targeted Ibrahim Biyari, commander of the Jabalia Brigade in the Hamas movement, stressing that the assassination came as part of a large-scale strike against Hamas members and the infrastructure of the Jabalia Brigade, which took control of civilian buildings in Gaza City, according to its claim. Meanwhile, a Hamas spokesman stressed the falsity of the Israeli story, denying the presence of one of the movement’s leaders in the camp.
What is Jabalia camp?
Jabalia Camp, the largest of the eight refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, was established in 1948, in the northeastern part of Gaza City, at a distance of one kilometer from the main “Gaza-Jaffa” road.
The camp is bordered to the west and south by the villages of Jabalia and Al-Nazla, to the north by the village of Beit Lahia, and to the east by the citrus orchards of Al-Nazla and Beit Lahia.
Most of the camp's residents are displaced from cities and villages located south of the occupying state, such as "Ashdod, Jaffa, Lydda, Ramla, and Beersheba."
When it was established, 35,000 refugees settled in Jabalia camp, with the number increasing over the years in an area not exceeding 1.4 square kilometers. According to estimates by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics for this year, the number of camp residents exceeds 116,000 refugees.
The lack of space and overpopulation made housing built close to each other, and in many cases, residents were forced to build additional floors to accommodate their families, under difficult living conditions.
While the United Nations Relief Agency for Palestine Refugees, UNRWA, announced in recent years the reduction of various relief services provided to camp residents, including Jabalia, due to a decline in financial support, according to its data.
Jabalia resilience camp
In 1970, Israel worked to deport approximately 975 families from the Jabalia camp residents to its border areas, and in 1971, the Israeli authorities demolished and removed approximately 3,600 homes for the people of the region, under the pretext of widening the roads to allow cars to pass for the purpose of pursuing the resistance at that time.
Jabalia Camp was called the "Resilience Camp", as it has been a constant target of repeated Israeli attacks since 1967, and reports indicate that it was the beginning of the spark for the first Palestinian Intifada in 1987.
The occupation army had previously committed two massacres in Jabalia Camp on March 6 and 10, 2003, when it invaded the camp before leaving the Gaza Strip in 2004, in addition to three wars, the last of which was in 2014, and many daily rounds of Israeli escalation, in which the camp had its share.
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- Egyptian Media