BEIT LAHIA: With their dead relatives wrapped in white burial shrouds, families in northern Gaza mourned their loved ones on Sunday killed in an Israeli air strike that was part of a withering, weeks-long military assault on the area.

The strike, which happened late on Saturday, flattened entire blocks of residential buildings in the town of Beit Lahia, AFP photographs showed, while rescuers said at least 73 Palestinians were killed, with many more still trapped under the rubble.

Families gathered at the Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the main medical facilities in northern Gaza, where the dead were placed in rows in a scene now familiar from a year of unrelenting Israeli air strikes on the Palestinian territory. Many of the injured, caked in dust, were treated by doctors on the hospital’s floor.

For those fortunate enough to escape the bombardment, displacement has brought only more hardship.

Gazans fleeing the sweeping land and air assault have been left hungry and exhausted as they try to escape the military’s dragnet, often forced to move repeatedly.

“We left with nothing but our children, walking a long distance to Gaza City. We are exhausted, with no food or water for the babies,” said Mariam Hamuda, 33.

Hamuda was among thousands who walked south all night to Gaza City to flee the Israeli ground operation targeting northern Gaza’s Jabalia and surrounding areas, where the Israeli military says it is targeting pockets of regrouping Hamas fighters. “We arrived in Gaza from Beit Lahia during the bombardment. We don’t know where to go or stay. There’s no place for us and our families. We can’t live like this. It’s like dying slowly,” said Ibrahim Hamuda, 66. Israel launched the assault on northern Gaza on October 6, which it said was to prevent Hamas militants from regrouping, tightening its siege on the war-battered area and sending tens of thousands of people fleeing.

“The nightmare in Gaza is intensifying,” Tor Wennesland, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said in a statement on Sunday. “Horrifying scenes are unfolding in the northern Strip amidst conflict, relentless Israeli strikes and an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis.”

On Friday, the UN’s top aid official talked of people trapped in north Gaza.

“In Jabalia, people are trapped under the rubble and first responders are blocked from reaching them,” the UN’s acting humanitarian chief Joyce Msuya said on X. “Tens of thousands of Palestinians are being forcibly displaced. Essential supplies are running out. Hospitals, overwhelmed with patients, have been hit.”

The Israeli army has defended the operation, while accusing Gaza health officials of giving exaggerated civilian casualties, including in Beit Lahia.

In a recent statement offering an insight into the overall assault the military said it had killed many militants in close battles.

“Dozens of terrorists have been eliminated in precise airstrikes by IAF (air force) aircraft and in close-quarters combat, and numerous weapons and buildings where the enemy had barricaded for terrorist activities have been dismantled,” the military said in a recent statement describing its operations in Jabalia — one of the worst hit areas in the ongoing operation.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Saturday that the operation has killed more than 400 people in just two weeks.

Israel has faced mounting criticism over the civilian toll and lack of food and aid reaching Gaza, where the UN has warned of famine.

The unprecedented Hamas attack on October 7 last year that sparked the war in Gaza, resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign to destroy Hamas and bring back the hostages has killed 42,603 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures the UN considers reliable.

For those stuck in northern Gaza, the continued fighting has only added to their misery. “We are now trapped with no food, water or medicine, facing starvation amid the rubble and destruction,” said Ahmad Saleh, 36, from the Al-Tawbah area in northern Gaza. “The situation gets worse every day and we are terrified, wondering when our turn will come.”