Jabalia, Gaza - Palestinians trapped in northern Gaza are reporting apocalyptic conditions amid an Israeli siege that threatens to kill thousands through bombardment, shooting, and starvation.

The medical facilities that Israel has not yet destroyed are running out of supplies and emergency responders are unable to reach people trapped under debris, with Israeli troops reportedly shooting at everything that moves.

"The number of dead is high, and people are under the rubble, missing," Muhammad Abu Halima, a 40-year-old Jabalia resident, told AFP.

"For over a week there has been no hope, no water and no means of life."

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Israel's army last weekend completely cut off Jabalia, Gaza's largest refugee camp, laying siege to the area while issued evacuation orders for residents. But residents, reporters, and aid organizations have reported being shot at by soldiers.

"Nobody is allowed to get in or out, anyone who tries is getting shot," Sarah Vuylsteke of Doctors Without Borders said.

The few journalists still alive and reporting from northern Gaza, such as Hossam Shabat, are describing scenes of unprecedented carnage.

"As I understand from my colleagues in Jabalia, the situation is unlike anything they have ever experienced," Palestinian journalist Younis Tirawi wrote on X. "Dozens of bodies scattered across the streets. It smells death all over."

This is all happening amid one of Israel's most brutal bombing campaigns yet, with at least 300 killed over the past week. The shelling and closed roads have prevented aid deliveries, choking off vital supplies to medical facilities.

"We are under Israeli siege," Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabalia, told AFP.

The hospital has just days' worth of fuel needed to power the facility and medical staff are "exhausted with very few doctors available," he said.

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"We are suffering from a blockade on food, medicine, medical supplies and even fuel coming from the south to the north."

Despite international outcry over the mass killings – the most conservative death toll in Gaza has long since passed 42,000 – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday defended the onslaught, saying troops were targeting militants.

A report in an Israeli newspaper on Friday, however, revealed plans to ethnically cleanse the entirety of northern Gaza.

"The right thing to do is to inform the approximately 300,000 residents who remained in the northern Gaza Strip… we are ordering you to leave," the plan's author, a retired major-general, said last month.

"In a week, the entire territory of the northern Gaza Strip will become military territory."