The murderous Israeli onslaught on Gaza continued Friday, as dozens of Palestinians were killed by airstrikes that targeted homes in refugee camps over a 24-hour period.

The Washington Post reported that Palestinian health officials said 77 people were killed in missile strikes in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza and the Jabalya refugee camp in the north. Other media have reported more than 100 were killed in two days.

Staff at the two hospitals near Nuseirat where bodies were brought reported eight people killed. At the Jabalya camp, Gaza civil defense force spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said 10 people were killed, including seven children, and 15 others were injured.

The Post reported, “In a civil defense force video sent out after the Jabalya strike, Bassal holds up the lifeless body of a small child. ‘Why do they kill? Why are these children killed?’ he asks, his voice full of grief and anger. ‘Imagine this little girl is your daughter, imagine she is your child.’”

The Associated Press said an Israeli missile struck the Jaffa residential tower in the Nuseirat refugee camp.

Speaking from Nuseirat, United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) emergency officer Louise Wateridge said aid was needed in Gaza to support people who have been uprooted multiple times by Israeli attacks and have little to protect themselves from the cold and rain.

Wateridge said, “The world is not seeing what’s going on with these people—it’s impossible for families to shelter in these conditions,” as more heavy rain was expected to hit Gaza on Friday evening.

“Most people are living under fabric. They don’t even have waterproof structures, and 69 percent of the buildings here have been damaged or destroyed. There’s absolutely nowhere for people to shelter from these elements.” She said that the horrific conditions across Gaza show, “An entire society here is now a graveyard.

“Over 2 million people are trapped. They cannot escape. And people continue to have basic needs deprived, and it just feels like every path here that you could possibly take is leading to death,” Wateridge said.

Late Friday, Palestinian media reported an Israeli aircraft had launched a raid on Sabra, southwest of Gaza City, and there are also reports of Israeli artillery shelling that targeted Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip.

The Gaza Health Ministry has confirmed at least 45,206 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since the genocide began in October 2023. The ministry also reported 107,512 injured. The death and injury toll are likely many multiples higher than these numbers due to the numbers of dead and injured not being accounted for or adequately counted.

In July, a report published in the medical journal The Lancet estimated that the actual number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza genocide could be as high as 186,000 or more. This figure has no doubt grown significantly higher in the last five months.

Al Jazeera also reported that an Israeli drone was launched against Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. The Palestinian Information Center also reported that Israeli artillery targeted the hospital’s gate.

Kamal Adwan Hospital, which is in the town of Beit Lahiya, has been the target of repeated brutal attacks by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) going back to December 2023, including the arrest and disappearance of medical staff, the bulldozing of tents of displaced Palestinians outside the facility, the arrest and torture of the hospital director and, most recently, tank artillery and air strikes.

On Friday, a report published by Haaretz quoted Israeli soldiers describing the blatant murder of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Unnamed soldiers, including career officers and reservists, told the Israeli daily that commanders were given unprecedented authority to operate in Gaza.

According to Al Jazeera, the soldiers said commanders had “ordered or allowed the killing of unarmed women, children and men in the Netzarim Corridor, a seven-kilometer-wide (4.3-mile-wide) strip of land that cuts across Gaza from Israel to the Mediterranean, and which has been turned into a military zone.”

The Haaretz report quoted an officer who recounted an incident, where a commander had announced that 200 fighters were killed, when actually “only 10 were confirmed as known Hamas operatives.” The soldiers told Haaretz they received questionable orders to open fire on “anyone who enters” Netzarim.

The report also quoted a soldier, who said his battalion commander told them, “Anyone crossing the line is a terrorist—no exceptions, no civilians. Everyone’s a terrorist.”

The Haaretz report confirms allegations made against Israel since last October that the Zionist regime of Benjamin Netanyahu is engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing and extermination of Palestinians in Gaza. 

The IDF justified its war crimes by claiming that the barbaric measures in the Netzarim Corridor “are carried out in accordance with structured combat procedures, plans and operational orders approved by the highest ranks in the (army).”

On Friday, Communication Specialist Rosalia Bollen of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) gave a press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva in which she said:

Children in Gaza are cold, sick and traumatized. Hunger and malnutrition, and the dire living conditions more broadly, continue to put the lives of children at risk. Right now, over 96 percent of women and children in Gaza cannot meet their basic nutritional needs. Most are surviving on rationed flour, lentils, pasta and canned food—a diet that slowly compromises their health.

As winter sets in, Bollen said the conditions of Gaza’s children has “drastically diminished.” 

In the West Bank, fascist Israeli settlers set fire to a mosque and vandalized property in the north on Friday, according to the head of the Palestinian village council.

Associated Press reported, “Nasfat al-Khafash, the head of the council in Marda where the attack occurred, said a group of settlers arrived early in the morning, setting the mosque on fire and scrawling hateful messages on it.”

Associated Press video showed spray-painted stars of David and the words in Hebrew, “the mosque will burn, the temple will be built,” an apparent reference to the ultranationalist desire to establish a Third Temple for Jews in Jerusalem at the holiest and most contested site in the Holy Land.

“These slogans reflect their upbringing and hatred towards Palestinians and Arabs,” said al-Khafash, adding that the settlers received “full support” from the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — the furthest-right government in Israel’s history.”