The Israeli military has rounded up hundreds of Palestinians across the northern Gaza Strip, separating families and forcing men to strip to their underwear before trucking some to a detention camp on the beach.
According to AP report, the arrested Palestinians spent hours, in some cases days, subjected to hunger and cold as reported by human rights activists, distraught relatives and released detainees themselves.
Palestinians detained in the shattered town of Beit Lahiya, the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya and neighborhoods of Gaza City said they were bound, blindfolded and bundled into the backs of trucks.
Some said they were taken to the camp at an undisclosed location, nearly naked and with little water.
“We were treated like cattle, they even wrote numbers on our hands,” said Ibrahim Lubbad, a 30-year-old computer engineer arrested in Beit Lahiya on December 7 with a dozen other family members and held overnight. “We could feel their hatred.”
The roundups have laid bare an emerging tactic in Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza, experts say, as the military seeks to solidify control in evacuated areas in the north and collect intelligence about Hamas operations nearly 10 weeks after the group’s deadly October 7 attack on southern Israel.
Militants killed about 1,200 people and abducted over 240 that day.
Source: AP
