Dozens reported killed in Gaza refugee camp blast  – BBC News

At least 50 people are said to have been killed and many more injured in a blast at the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza .

Those figures come from the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry , which also says the camp came under Israeli fire .

We're yet to hear from the Israeli military .

The BBC is still establishing the details .

Pictures from the scene , as you can see , show people searching for survivors and pulling bodies from the rubble .

Israel earlier said its forces are striking targets in all parts of Gaza , with fierce battles being reported with Hamas .

Let me show you these pictures from Israel's defence forces showing their troops carrying out ground operations .

The says it has encountered anti tank missiles and machine gun fire as they advance into Gaza .

A spokesman said it was hunting commanders of Hamas and attacking infrastructure .

Meanwhile , this video was released by Hamas .

They say that the people you can see surrounded by tanks are in a firefight with Israeli soldiers in northern Gaza over the weekend .

The Palestinian Red Crescent says the area around the al Quds Hospital in Gaza City has again been under heavy bombardment .

The Health Ministry says More than 8.5 1000 people have been killed in the past three weeks .

Israel says over 1400 Israelis were killed in the Hamas attacks on October 7th .

Well , let's go straight to our diplomatic correspondent , Paul Adams , who's in Jerusalem and Paul .

What more can you tell us about the blast at the Jabalia camp ?

Well , Matthew , I think you've shown some of the pictures .

They are pretty shocking .

That crater is huge , an absolutely enormous hole surrounded by vast quantities of rubble and then homes and buildings around there that have been obviously severely damaged either in the course of uh , this incident or perhaps , uh , over the course of the last three weeks .

Baia , in case viewers are wondering , is the largest of the refugee camps in the Gaza Strip , home to around 115 120,000 people before this war began , packed into an area of about 1.5 square kilometres .

It's not tents , it's it's buildings that have been there for decades and tightly packed streets , and we think , judging by the number of people who are there looking in the rubble to try and find bodies and survivors .

There are still hundreds , maybe thousands of people still in the area , despite days and days of Israeli warnings for people to leave northern Gaza .

So it is likely that any airstrike on Jabalia Uh and this does appear to be an airstrike .

That kind of crater is really only consistent with a large munition dropped from the air .

Then it is almost inevitable that large numbers of civilians who have chosen , uh , to stay in the North will have been caught up in this .

That that figure of around 50 which , uh , is the number counted by journalists on the scene from Agence France Press That appears to be a AAA .

Uh , the minimum number of people caught up in this obviously huge explosion .

Paul , you were mentioning some of the geography of the Gaza Strip .

But over the last week and more , we've heard from the Israelis urging people ordering people to leave the north to go to the south south of the Wadi Gaza .

Just tell us a little more about where this camp is within that sort of geography north south and this line that the Israelis have talked about Yes , So Jabalia is north of Gaza City , so it's between Gaza City and the border fence with Israel , so it is not far from the kind .

The areas where Israeli forces have been pushing in on the ground .

They're not there yet .

They haven't reached those really densely populated areas yet , but they are gradually pushing forward on a number of areas in the north .

At the same time , we've seen the movement of Israeli forces south of Gaza City closer to Wadi Gaza , in what looks like an attempt to cut off Gaza City from the rest of the Gaza Strip .

That would be entirely consistent with the messaging that we've been hearing from the Israelis really since this war began three weeks ago , which is to try and tell everybody to move south of that line .

They , the Israelis , feel that they have a lot that they need to achieve in the wider Gaza City area , that that is where many Hamas fighters will be located .

That is where a lot of the , uh , bunkers and tunnels that we've heard the Israelis talking about a great deal and over the past few weeks , that's where all of that is located .

And so I think it is likely that as the days go by , more and more focus will be on this very , very densely populated area .

Um , what we don't know is how many people civilians remain in in that area .

We do know that there are thousands of people sheltering at Shifa Hospital , where the Israelis allege that Hamas has bunkers underneath .

We know of thousands of people sheltering at the Al Quds Hospital in another part of Gaza City .

And there are UN schools and medical facilities dotted about this entire area where people are still sheltering so that it is safe to assume that there are still many , many thousands of people who run the risk of being trapped in Gaza at the very moment when the Israelis turn their attention to it on the ground .

Only this time , yesterday or around this time we heard Benjamin Netanyahu absolutely adamant there would be no ceasefire .

It's interesting .

Just in the last couple of hours , the US secretary of state , Antony Blinken , has said humanitarian pauses must be considered in Gaza at he was talking to a Senate hearing .

But even that even a pause looks really unlikely at the moment , doesn't it ?

I think it does .

And actually a pause will not even affect Gaza City at all .

The Israelis have made it clear that nothing that goes into Gaza , no aid that goes into Gaza , will go north of that Wadi Gaza line that for the Israelis is absolutely essential .

They're happy for aid to go to the South , to the area where many , many hundreds of thousands of people have fled and are now sheltering some of them in tents .

But even there , the aid that is managing to get across the border from Egypt is just a tiny fraction of what is needed .

We have heard American officials and Israeli officials talking in the last couple of days about increasing the number of trucks that go across the border up to around 100 .

That would be a start , but we haven't got to that point yet .

We haven't seen that number of trucks going in on any single day , and even if they were to get in , it would be pretty challenging for the aid agencies to address the needs of those people who are huddled in the south desperately in need of assistance .

But as for the North and anyone north of Wadi Gaza , they are on their own .