Maldives condemns Israeli strike on Gaza refugee camp

Maldives on Wednesday strongly condemned the Israeli attack on the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza that has caused death and injury to a large number of innocent Palestinians including several children.

Palestinian health officials said at least 50 Palestinians were killed when Israeli air strikes hit a densely populated refugee camp in north Gaza on Tuesday, as Israeli ground forces battled Hamas gunmen based in a sprawling tunnel network.

In a statement, the Maldivian foreign ministry said Maldives considers the deliberate acts of violence by Israel against the innocent civilian population of Palestine a gross violation of international humanitarian law, amounting to a war crime.

"The government of Maldives reiterates its call upon the international community to take decisive measures to stop these attacks on innocent civilians and calls for an immediate ceasefire, to allow the unobstructed facilitation of humanitarian aid into Gaza, in accordance with the United Nations General Assembly Resolution passed on 27 October 2023," the statement read. 

UN and other aid officials said civilians in the besieged Palestinian enclave were engulfed by a public health catastrophe, with hospitals struggling to treat snowballing casualties as electricity supplies peter out.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed international calls for a "humanitarian pause" in fighting to enable emergency aid deliveries to civilians suffering from critical shortages of food, medicine, drinking water and fuel.

He has vowed to press ahead with plans to annihilate Hamas after several inconclusive wars dating back to the militant group's 2007 takeover of Gaza.

Officials at Gaza's Indonesian Hospital said more than 50 Palestinians had been killed and 150 wounded when tons of aerial explosives struck residential dwellings in the heart of the Jabalia camp in urbanised north Gaza.

Footage obtained by Reuters showed a swathe of destruction, with deep bomb craters and gutted, multi-storey cement dwellings as people dug through mounds of rubble with their hands in search of loved ones, dead or alive.

Medics lay the dead swaddled in white cloth in a long line outside the hospital, located in the adjacent town of Beit Lahiya, as the injured including wailing children were rushed inside for treatment amid scenes of pandemonium.

A Hamas statement said there were 400 dead and injured in Jabalia, which lies on Gaza City's outskirts within the main northern ground zone of combat between dug-in Hamas militants and Israeli troops and tanks. Jabalia houses families of refugees from wars with Israel dating back to 1948.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed again on Tuesday for the protection of civilians caught in the conflict, stressing the need for proportional behaviour and precautions by all parties.

"International humanitarian law establishes clear rules that cannot be ignored. It is not an a la carte menu and cannot be applied selectively," Guterres said in a statement.