Jabalia refugee camp Piecing together the airstrike destruction

On Tuesday afternoon, rescuers combed with their hands through surface layers of a tangled mass of concrete and O steel, which hours earlier had been homes in the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza.

- Emma Graham-Harrison, Manisha Ganguly, Elena Morresi

They were searching for survivors, or the bodies of victims, that the immense force of an Israeli airstrike had left near the surface.Those trapped deeper may be entombed for months.

After more than three weeks of intense bombardment of Gaza, heavy machinery can no longer reach bomb sites down damaged roads, and in any case the authorities and people on the ground say the fuel to operate the machines is running out.

Even so, body bags piled up with horrific speed at the morgue of the nearby Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahia, and then outside the building. The wounded filled its beds or were raced to Dar al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, where medics from Médecins Sans Frontières struggled to find space even for badly injured children.

The pulverising attack on Jabalia came as Israeli ground troops pushed into Gaza from at least three directions. The Israeli military said the attack had been authorised to assassinate a Hamas commander and destroy his base.

An IDF spokesperson, Daniel Hagari, named the target as Ibrahim Biari, the commander of Central Jabaliya Battalion, who he said had been leading fighting in northern Gaza from a network of tunnels under the camp.

Hagari claimed Biari had played a key role in planning the 7 October attacks on Israel, in which more than 1,400 people were massacred, the majority civilians, and more than 200 people taken hostage.