Portugal Colonial - Rescuers struggle to reach dozens missing after north Gaza strike

Rescuers on Sunday said they had pulled at least 34 bodies -- including women and children -- from rubble of the building in the Beit Lahia district after a particularly lethal pre-dawn strike in the area where Israeli forces began a major operation on October 6.

The United Nations and others have decried humanitarian conditions in the area.

"First responders and civilians are using rudimentary tools to look for survivors under the building's rubble," civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

"We hope to find survivors, but hope is fading as time goes on," he said, adding that, like the rest of the population, rescuers lacked everything from food to medicine.

Since the start of the war when Hamas Palestinian militants attacked Israel on October 7 last year, the agency has asked for special tools to be allowed in, particularly those that would allow workers to search through rubble.

On October 24, it announced it was no longer able to continue operating in northern Gaza because of a lack of supplies and Israeli "threats" against its teams.

But nonetheless its rescue efforts have persisted.

"A drone targeted a young man that was driving a tuk-tuk that he was using to transport martyrs," Abdullah Hammouda, a resident of the targeted building, told AFP, referring to a type of motorcycle taxi.

- Dusty, displaced -

Hammouda's wife Abeer, still in shock from the "terrifying explosion", said that "had it happened in another country, the whole world would be outraged".

The 34 dead in Beit Lahia are among a total of 43,922, a majority of them civilians, killed in Israel's retaliatory offensive after Hamas's attack, according to data from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. The UN considers the figures reliable.

Hamas's unprecedented attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's air and ground assault in north Gaza, which the military said aimed to stop Hamas militants from regrouping, began in the Jabalia area before expanding to Beit Lahia.

On Sunday the Israeli military said two of its soldiers had been killed in north Gaza, and several strikes had been directed at militant targets there.

On Monday the European Union's outgoing foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said he had "no more words".

"It's about 44,000 people killed in Gaza, the whole area is being destroyed, and 70 percent of the people being killed are women or children," Borrell said.

Jordan and Qatar on Sunday urged "immediate" action to "end the unprecedented humanitarian disaster in northern Gaza", their foreign ministers said in a joint statement, blaming "Israel's failure to allow aid to enter".

On Monday, Bassal expressed concern that more than 70,000 residents of Beit Lahia and Jabalia lacked clean water and food amid frequent air strikes.

AFP journalists on Sunday saw many fleeing Beit Lahia on foot, donkey cart or bicycle towards Gaza City to the south.

Children, women and men walked amid rubble and piles of waste, some of them covered in dust. Loaded with bundles and bags, some pulled improvised carts full of what belongings they could carry.

G.Teles--PC