“Israel has destroyed the centre of everything, this is Israel’s most intense bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip in recent memory! The level of destruction is unbelievable!”
These were the words of Palestinian residents as they described the current pummeling of Gaza by Israeli military forces.
They termed Tuesday night endless strikes as “The Day of Judgement”, with nonstop fierce heavy air strikes and tank shelling.
About 350,000 Palestinians in Gaza are internally displaced. Some fled to UN run schools to seek shelter. However, there are concerns that Israeli forces may not spare the UN controlled schools, as bombings have occurred very close to the facility.
The death toll in Gaza has risen to 1,000 including 200 children, in addition to 5,000 injured.
A few hospitals are out of operations due to strikes in their vicinity. A number of ambulances are targeted killing paramedics and injured people. At least three paramedics and three journalists were among those reportedly killed in the air strikes.
There is acute shortage of medical supplies, and Gaza health officials urge foreign volunteers to come and help in Gaza.
Amid the power cuts, Gazans resort to other means to get electricity at least to charge their phones, routers or laptops or a bulb at night in the modest of darkness. Israel has cut off all food, medical, and power supplies to Gaza in the wake of the war, and it’s only a matter of days before the available supplies run out.
Palestinian authorities said at least 1,055 people have been killed, including over 260 children, and another 4,250 have been injured in Israeli air strikes on Gaza, amid the ongoing #IsraelHamas crossfire. The death toll is expected to rise as Israeli forces escalate attack on #Gaza.
At the moment, the Islamic University of Gaza has also been reduced to rubble by Israeli warplanes.
Recall that Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, speaking to soldiers near the Gaza fence, said: “Hamas wanted a change and it will get one. What was in Gaza will no longer be. The rules of war have changed, we will cripple Gaza so that it will remember it for the next 50 years.”
President Benjamin Netanyahu had also threatened to send a terrible message that Gazans will never forget for decades to come, after Hamas terrorists attacked innocent civilians in Israeli villages and slaughtered parents and babies.
Hear him, ” We were struck Saturday by an attack whose savagery we have not seen since the Holocaust. We’ve had hundreds massacred, families wiped out in their beds in their homes, women brutally raped and murdered, over 100 kidnapped, including children,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu told US President Joe Biden that “since we last spoke, the extent of this evil, it’s only gotten worse. They took dozens of children, bound them up, burned them and executed them. They beheaded soldiers. They mowed down these youngsters who came to a music festival and just put five jeeps around a depression in the soil, and like Babi Yar, they mowed them down, making sure that they killed everybody.”
“We’ve never seen such savagery in the history of the State. They’re even worse than ISIS and we need to treat them as such.”
“The Israel Defense Forces will act immediately to destroy Hamas’s capabilities. “We will cripple them mercilessly and avenge this black day they have brought upon Israel and its citizens.”
“Residents of Gaza, get out now. We will be everywhere and with all our might. This is an enemy that murders children and mothers in their homes, in their beds. An enemy that kidnaps the elderly, kids, youths. Murderers who massacre and slaughter our citizens, our kids, who just wanted to have fun on the holiday.
“What happened today has never before seen in Israel, and I will make sure it does not happen again.”
Slamming his fists down and injecting his words with fury, Netanyahu vowed that Israel would “win this war,” but warned of a heavy cost, hinting at a likely ground incursion.
“This war will take time. It will be hard. We have tough days ahead of us,” he said.
“Any place Hamas deploys, in this evil city, all the places Hamas is hiding, operating — we will turn it into a ruin,” he concluded.