Israeli fighter jets and helicopter gunships buzz central Gaza
The situation is escalating especially in Gaza City’s Shujayea and Zeitoun neighbourhoods. Israeli forces are attacking houses there. Evacuation orders were also issued in the middle of the night in Jabalia, where Palestinians were forced to leave under fire in the dark.
Here in Deir el-Balah, Israeli forces targeted the homes of two families. The sound of F-16s and Apache helicopters is extremely loud in the sky and traumatising for Palestinian children.
In central Gaza’s Bureij camp, an attack killed eight Palestinians from the same family. A fire that erupted from the attack burned for hours. Most of those killed in the central area are women and children.
All of this happens as Israeli forces continue to close crucial land crossings. There is still no food, no fuel, no medical supplies and no cooking gas being let into Gaza.
Israel army forcibly displaces tens of thousands in northern Gaza
The Israeli military has now expanded evacuation orders to tens of thousands of residents across the war-battered enclave.
On Tuesday, the Israeli army told residents in all northern border towns to evacuate, saying Palestinian rockets were fired at Israel from the area. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population has already been forcibly displaced multiple times during nearly 18 months of war.
The Israeli military resumed its campaign against Hamas in Gaza a week ago, shattering a two-month ceasefire. Since then, more than 730 people, mostly women and children, have been killed.
Palestinians face worsening shortages of food, drinking water and medicine after Israel blocked aid deliveries on March 2.
‘Not salvageable’: Doctors describe restart of Israeli attacks on Gaza
As Israel broke the ceasefire and renewed its attacks on Gaza last week, torn bodies soon streamed into hospitals. What stunned doctors was the number of child victims.
“Just child after child, young patient after young patient,” Dr Sakib Rokadiya said. “The vast, vast majority [of victims] were women, children, the elderly.”
Khan Younis’s Nasser Hospital was soon filled with the wounded. Rokadiya and Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan are both volunteers with the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians.
“I was overwhelmed, running from corner to corner, trying to find out who to prioritise, who to send to the operating room, who to declare a case that’s not salvageable,” Haj-Hassan said. “It’s a very difficult decision, and we had to make it multiple times.”
Israel is imposing ‘slow death’ on Gaza patients, health official says
Munir al-Bursh, the director-general of the Health Ministry in Gaza, says the word “catastrophic” falls short of describing the state of the health sector in Gaza amid Israel’s “war of annihilation” against Palestinians.
Al-Bursh said Gaza is suffering from severe shortages in fuel and basic medical supplies, including gauze and oxygen tanks.
“Right now, there is one power generator at the Indonesian Hospital, and seven patients in the intensive care unit. If that generator stops, the patients will die,” al-Bursh warned.
He added that lack of medicine for chronic illnesses, including hypertension and diabetes, is killing people in Gaza. “These are real miseries that the viewer cannot see. There is slow death in Gaza,” al-Bursh told Al Jazeera Arabic.
Death toll in Gaza rises
Gaza’s Health Ministry says 792 people have been killed and 1,663 injured in the week since Israel resumed its war on the Strip. The total death toll since the war started on October 7, 2023, has risen to 50,144, while 113,704 people have been injured, it said.
Death toll of Gaza children killed in a week a conservative estimate
Save the Children says more than 270 children have been killed in the week since Israel resumed its bombardment of Gaza, but this death toll does not include those who were pulverised in Israeli strikes and whose remains are unidentifiable.
Entire families have been obliterated, something we have seen happen numerous times since October 7, 2023.
Children are being killed in record numbers, and this is raising concerns for the future of Palestinian society, both socially and economically.
