LIVE | Day 28: Israel says it has surrounded Gaza; US calls for humanitarian pause

After two Israeli airstrikes flattened an entire block of apartment buildings in the Bureij refugee camp and damaged two UN schools-turned-shelters, rubble-covered Palestinians big and small arrived at a hospital too packed to take them.

Tiny, motionless bodies lay flat against the hospital's hard floor. A small boy bled out onto the tiles as medics tried to staunch the flow from his head. A baby lay next to him with an oxygen mask strapped on — covered in ash, his chest struggled to rise and fall. Their father sat beside them.

“Here they are, America! Here they are, Israel!” he screamed. “They are children. Our children die every day.”

It was not immediately clear why Israel targeted Bureij, which is located in central Gaza in an area where Israel has urged people to go to stay safe from heavy fighting further north.

The Bureij strikes on Thursday (November 2) killed at least 15, Gaza's Civil Defense said. It said dozens of others were believed to be buried in the rubble.

In Bureij, which is home to an estimated 46,000 people, Palestinians hacked at the rubble, searching for survivors.

A growing list of Israeli officials have accepted responsibility for failing to prevent Hamas' brutal attack on Israeli communities during the Oct. 7 incursion that triggered the current Israel-Hamas war. Conspicuously absent from that roll call is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Following the horrific assault, which saw the deadliest day for Israelis since the country was established 75 years ago, Netanyahu has repeatedly sidestepped accountability. He has instead blamed others, in what critics say shows a leader thinking more about his own political survival than soothing and steering a traumatised nation.

“Netanyahu is fighting a personal battle of survival and that takes precedence over fighting Israel's war against Hamas,” said Netanyahu biographer and journalist Anshel Pfeffer. “As part of that battle, he's prepared to malign those who are now commanding Israel's army and intelligence services.”

Israel's top security brass, including the military chief of staff, the defence minister and the head of the domestic security agency Shin Bet, came forward and accepted responsibility for the blunder in the days after the attack.

Netanyahu, however, has not taken outright responsibility for the missteps that led up the horrific attack, despite serving as prime minister for 13 of the past 14 years. He says there will be time for investigations — after the war.

Dozens of Palestinians with foreign passports crossed through the war-torn Gaza Strip's only exit for the second straight day on Thursday (November 2), escaping Israel's suffocating siege into the empty Egyptian desert. But the evacuation rush left families divided by citizenship status in painful limbo.

Nizar, a 41-year-old aid worker from Gaza City, gently shook his children awake at dawn and drove to Gaza's southern Rafah crossing with his wife, 8-month-old son and 6-year-old daughter, Zainab — a dangerous road trip even from where they'd sought refuge in central Gaza.

The bombardment didn't stop and they didn't know what awaited them at the border. All they knew was that the quirk of history that led to Zainab's birth in San Francisco gave her American citizenship and the family its only ticket out of a war that has ravaged Gaza, killed thousands of Palestinians and given his once-bubbly daughter panic attacks and nightmares.

Nizar jumped up when he heard Hamas authorities call Zainab's name from the loudspeaker at the crowded Rafah terminal. But border officials quickly told him that US citizens were the only ones allowed to evacuate and that the rest of his family couldn't cross into Egypt. Many families, they said, had been separated for this reason.

“It's just total confusion, nobody understands what is happening,” Nizar said. “There are just tons of families who are very confused and unable to join their relatives and leave.”

The U.S. embassy in Israel didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the issue of families being separated at the border. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was set to visit Israel on Friday to discuss the conflict.

“We got out today 74 American folks out that are dual citizens," Biden said in a brief exchange with reporters as he hosted Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader for an Oval Office meeting. The White House has previously said some 500 to 600 US citizens had been trapped in Gaza since the start of the Oct 7 Israel-Hamas war.

The administration said earlier this week that five Americans were among dozens of dual citizens who were able to get out of the Strip where a humanitarian crisis is unfolding. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that the administration was hopeful that additional US citizens will be able to leave Gaza on Thursday and the pace of Americans who want to leave will now move at an accelerated pace.