Gaza: As deadly Israeli airstrikes pounded the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, Israel said it had regained control of the border areas from the Palestinian group Hamas.
Fears of a regional conflagration have surged ahead of an expected Israeli ground incursion into Gaza, the crowded, impoverished enclave from where Hamas launched its land, air and sea attack on the Jewish Sabbath.
Gaza officials reported 900 people killed so far while the Israeli death toll crossed 1,200, an Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson said Wednesday, and Israel’s army said the bodies of roughly 1,500 fighters had been found.
“The death toll is a staggering 1,200 dead Israelis,” IDF spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus said in a video message.
International NGOs issued a stark warning over the health and humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.
“My entire life, I have seen Israel kill us, confiscate our lands and arrest our children,” said Farah al-Saadi, 52, a coffee vendor from Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank who praised the Hamas offensive.
The Israeli army has called up 300,000 reservists and massed tanks and other heavy armour both near Gaza and on the northern border with Lebanon, where exchanges of fire continued.
The military said its forces had largely reclaimed the embattled south and the border around Gaza, and dislodged holdout Hamas fighters from more than a dozen towns and kibbutzim.
Earlier, for the third time in 24 hours, an Israeli air strike hit Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt, an AFP photographer and an NGO said.
White smoke billowed from among fishing boats after an air strike on Gaza’s port, and in Jerusalem, the deserted streets were targeted by Hamas rocket fire.
“Israeli people they are scared of the Arabs and the Arabs are scared of the Jews… everybody is scared of each other,” said Ahmed Karkash, a shop owner in the Old City.
More than 260,000 people displaced in Gaza: UN
In Gaza City, streets are clogged with rubble and littered with shards of glass.
Mazen Mohammad and his family slept on the ground floor of their apartment block, huddling together as explosions rang out around them.
What they woke up to the next day was unrecognisable. “We felt like we were in a ghost town, as if we were the only survivors,” Mohammad, 38, told AFP.
Over 260,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the Gaza Strip, as heavy Israeli bombardments from the air, land and sea continue to hit the Palestinian enclave, the United Nations said.
“Over 263,934 people in Gaza are believed to have fled their homes,” said UN humanitarian agency OCHA said in an update Tuesday, warning that “this number is expected to rise further”.
It said that around 3,000 people had been displaced “due to previous escalations”, prior to Saturday.
The bombing campaign has destroyed more than 1,000 housing units, and 560 have been so severely damaged they are uninhabitable, OCHA said, citing Palestinian authorities.
Among the displaced, nearly 175,500 people sought shelter in 88 schools run by the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, it said.
More than 14,500 others had fled to 12 government schools, while close to 74,000 were estimated to be staying with relatives and neighbours or seeking shelters in churches and other facilities.
The number of displaced people inside of Gaza “represents the highest number of people displaced since the 50-day escalation of hostilities in 2014,” it said.
“Meeting basic needs is becoming increasingly challenging for those who have not been displaced,” OCHA warned.
Israel has imposed what it called a “complete siege” on the already blockaded Gaza Strip, cutting off food, water, fuel and electricity — a move that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned would worsen an already dire humanitarian situation.
European Union foreign ministers urged Israel not to cut such essentials, and called for humanitarian corridors for those trying to flee.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk said such sieges are prohibited under international humanitarian law.
The United Nations said more than 187,500 people had been displaced inside Gaza, most taking shelter in UN schools.
Medical supplies, including oxygen, were running low at Gaza’s overwhelmed Al-Shifa hospital, said Mohammed Ghonim, a doctor in the emergency room.
Fear and chaos reigned among the 2.3 million Palestinians living in the coastal territory that has been hammered by thousands of Israeli munitions.
Four Palestinian journalists were also killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza City, media unions and officials said. Explosions again shook Gaza City on Tuesday night.
Hamas said the strikes killed two of its senior figures: Zakaria Muammar led its economics section, and Jawad Abu Shamala coordinated ties with other Palestinian factions. Israel’s army also announced their deaths.
‘Clear evidence’ on war crimes
UN investigation into alleged human rights violations in the Israeli-Palestinian war said there was “already clear evidence that war crimes may have been committed” since Saturday’s surprise Hamas assault.
There is already clear evidence that #WarCrimes may have been committed in #Israel & #Gaza, & all those targeting civilians must be held to account, says the @UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem Israel➡️ https://t.co/NP3MhVMfpK pic.twitter.com/G4AtieXDDw
— United Nations Human Rights Council | #HRC55 (@UN_HRC) October 10, 2023
“All those who have violated international law and targeted civilians must be held accountable for their crimes,” said the Commission of Inquiry.
It is also “gravely concerned” by Israel’s total siege on the Gaza Strip, “which will undoubtfully cost civilian lives and constitutes collective punishment”.
‘No place is safe in Gaza’
Sheltering from Israeli night raids on Gaza, Mazen Mohammad and his family slept on the ground floor of their apartment block, huddling together with frightened neighbours as explosions rang all around them.
The neighbourhood they woke up to the next day was ravaged beyond recognition: buildings had crumbled to the ground and debris carpeted the streets. “As soon as we saw the neighbourhood, my wife and I simultaneously asked ourselves: Is this real?,” said Mohammad, a 38-year-old father of four.
“We felt like we were in a ghost town, as if we were the only survivors,” he told AFP.
At the morgue in Gaza’s Khan Younis hospital, bodies were laid on the ground on stretchers with names written on their bellies. Medics called for relatives to pick up bodies quickly because there was no more space for the dead.
A building was hit while being used as an emergency shelter. Survivors there spoke of many dead.
“No place is safe in Gaza, as you see they hit everywhere,” said Ala Abu Tair, 35, who had sought shelter there with his family after fleeing Abassan Al-Kabira near the border.
Taken ‘by surprise’
Israel has been left reeling by Hamas’s unprecedented ground, air and sea assault that began with thousands of rockets, likening it to the 9/11 attacks on the US.
In the aftermath, soldiers who were on guard duty along the hi-tech security barrier around Gaza recounted how the attack began with an effort to cripple observation cameras and communications.
“They took us by surprise and we weren’t ready for it,” a lookout soldier said in testimony posted on Instagram.
Israel faced the threat of a multi-front war after three days of clashes with fighters on the northern border with Lebanon.
For the first time since the Hamas attack, there was an exchange of fire between Israel and forces in Syria, after Israel’s military said munitions were fired towards the Golan Heights it has occupied since 1967.
Mourners in the southern Lebanese village of Khirbet Selm carried two caskets, draped in yellow Hezbollah flags, with the bodies of two fighters it said were killed in Israeli strikes a day earlier. A third fighter was also killed, the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement said.
On Tuesday, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades claimed a fresh salvo of rocket fire from south Lebanon towards Israel, the Israeli army said, adding it retaliated with artillery fire.
“It’s like a state of war,” said Yaakov Regev, sipping coffee at a petrol station in northern Israel, a few kilometres from the Lebanon border.
Unrest has also surged in the West Bank, where 15 Palestinians have been killed since Saturday.
