GAZA: A Zionist air strike on a single residential block killed nearly 100 people on Tuesday, Gaza’s civil defense agency said, leaving rescuers scrambling through rubble as relatives plucked body parts off walls and floors in a desperate search for any survivors. The latest bombing came as the Zionist entity faced a chorus of international criticism after its parliament voted overwhelmingly to ban UNRWA, the main United Nations aid agency working with Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian rescuers and desperate family members gathered around the demolished five-storey block in Beit Lahia in the north of Gaza. A charred body with long hair hung out of an upper-storey window and corpses wrapped in blankets were lined up in the street below, as stunned relatives sought to identify the dead.

“The number of martyrs in the massacre of the Abu Nasr family home in Beit Lahia has risen to 93 martyrs, and about 40 are still missing under the rubble,” Gaza civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP. Four Zionist soldiers were killed in combat in Gaza. Neighbors scrabbled through mounds of concrete wreckage, wrapped whatever remains they could find in blankets and lowered them by rope from a balcony to be laid on the blood-splattered ground, next to intact bodies of others.

People dragged aside chunks of dusty masonry and twisted wire, revealing the limbs of victims trapped underneath, many of them lifeless as they were eased out. The Gaza health ministry said at least 20 of those killed were children. “There are tens of martyrs (dead) - tens of displaced people were living in this house. The house was bombed without prior warning,” Ismail Ouaida, a witness who was helping to recover bodies, said in a video shared on social media. “As you can see, martyrs are here and there, with body parts hanging from the walls.”

“The explosion happened at night and I first thought it was shelling, but when I went out after sunrise I saw people pulling bodies, limbs and the wounded from under the rubble,” said Rabie Al-Shandagly, 30, who had taken refuge in a nearby school in Beit Lahia. “Most of the victims are women and children, and people are trying to save the injured, but there are no hospitals or proper medical care,” he told AFP.

The Zionist military has been conducting a sweeping air and ground assault in northern Gaza since Oct 6 – particularly around Jabalia, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun — in what it describes as an operation to prevent Hamas from regrouping. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been forced to flee the area, more than 12 months into the war. The Zionist offensive has killed at least 43,061 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians, triggering warnings of a humanitarian catastrophe.

“They are after children, and women, there is no fighting here, it is only (Zionist) hell bombs dropped on our heads from the sky,” said Adel, 60, a Beit Lahia resident. “People who are bombed die before medical teams arrive, and those who make it to hospitals die too because there is no medication,” he told Reuters. “North Gaza is a place of hell - a big operation of killing, destruction, rubble, makeshift graveyards and famine,” Adnan Abu Hasna, Gaza media spokesperson for UNRWA told Reuters in Cairo.

“The world has forgotten about us, north Gaza is being wiped out by bombs, by starvation and by displacement,” said Ali, a resident of Jabalia who asked that his full name not be used for fears of reprisals. “People are being killed without ambulances able to reach them or hospitals to treat them. We don’t have coffins, we use blankets instead, though we are in acute need of blankets as it is getting colder at night,” he told Reuters via a chat app.

International concerns mounted after the Zionist parliament voted overwhelmingly to ban UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. Lawmakers also passed a measure prohibiting Zionist officials from working with UNRWA and its employees. The Zionist entity strictly controls all humanitarian aid shipments into Gaza, and UNRWA has provided essential aid, schooling and healthcare across the Palestinian territories and in the diaspora for more than seven decades.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said London was “gravely concerned” and the French foreign ministry said it “very strongly regrets” the law, which it said could have a “catastrophic” effect on civilians. Germany, which has been a staunch defender of the Zionist entity, warned it would “effectively make UNRWA’s work in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem impossible... jeopardizing vital humanitarian aid for millions of people”.

UN chief Antonio Guterres said the Zionist law could have “devastating consequences” if implemented and “would likely prevent UNRWA from continuing its essential work”. The foreign ministry of Jordan, which also hosts UNRWA offices, condemned the ban as a “continuation of (the Zionist entity’s) frantic efforts to assassinate the UN agency politically”. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on social media that the Zionist entity was “ready” to continue providing aid to Gaza “in a way that does not threaten (the Zionist entity’s) security”.

In Lebanon, Zionist tanks rolled into the outskirts of the village of Khiam, their deepest incursion yet in the ground operation they launched against Hezbollah last month, state media reported. Separately, the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, said its headquarters in southern Lebanon had been hit by a rocket fired “likely by Hezbollah or an affiliated group”, leaving some troops with minor injuries. The Austrian defense minister said eight of its soldiers were hurt.

According to an AFP tally based on official figures, at least 1,700 people have been killed in Lebanon since Sept 23, when the fighting escalated as the Zionist entity launched an air and ground offensive against Hezbollah, which had been carrying out rocket attacks in support of Hamas. – Agencies