Gaza:

Most of the Gaza Strip’s 2.3 million people have neither electricity nor water. And, with hundreds of Israeli attacks raining down on their small area, they have nowhere to run.

The Palestinian territories, one of the most populated places on earth, have been under siege since Saturday, with almost constant bombardment that Palestinian health officials say has killed more than 1,000 people. The brutal reprisal is in retaliation for an attack by Hamas on Israel, which the Israeli military says killed more than 1,200 people.

Gaza’s only power station, which had been operating intermittently for several days, shut down on Wednesday after running out of fuel. Water cannot be supplied to houses without electricity. At night there is almost complete darkness punctuated by fireballs and pinpricks of light from phones used as flashlights.

A Palestinian girl holding her two children in her arms standing on a street in Gaza City after Israeli air strikes. Photo: AFP

“I have lived through all the wars and incursions in the past, but I have never seen anything worse than this war,” said Yaman Hamad, 35, a father of four whose home was destroyed in Israeli attacks on northern Gaza. ” City of Beit Hanoun.

At a hospital in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, relatives and friends lined up outside a crowded morgue, where bodies were piled on the floor because coolers were full or had no electricity.

Mourners were desperate to bury their loved ones quickly before the unseasonably warm heat engulfed them. They spoke briefly about the bodies, praying for the repose of the souls, before they carried them to nearby graves, with stretchers if there were available, or without stretchers otherwise.

Reuters interviewed more than three dozen people in Gaza and most echoed Hamad’s sentiments. He painted a picture of fear and despair in the face of what he described as the worst violence he had ever seen.

Reading: UN agency says 9 of its staff have been killed in Gaza airstrikes since October 7

The strip’s only other border crossing into Egypt has been blocked by Egyptian authorities, with people saying they are stranded. They fear the worst is yet to come, including a possible ground invasion as Israel seeks revenge for Saturday’s attack.

The Hamas attack was strongly condemned by the United States and other Western governments.

Civilian damage ‘unprecedented’

Israel will “wipe out Hamas from the face of the earth,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant said on Wednesday, pledging to step up military operations in Gaza.

Beit Hanoun, near the border with Israel, was one of the first places hit by retaliatory Israeli attacks, with many roads and buildings destroyed and thousands of people displaced, according to Hamas and local residents.

A Palestinian man points out the destruction as people inspect the damage caused by Israeli air strikes overnight in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Photo:AFP

There was no way for Alaa al-Kafarneh’s family to escape.

The 31-year-old man said he fled the city along with his pregnant wife, his father, brothers, cousins ​​and in-laws on Saturday. They moved towards the Beech refugee camp on the coast, where they hoped they would be safer, but airstrikes began targeting that area as well, so they moved east towards Sheikh Radwan, another district.

He said that on Tuesday night there was an airstrike on the building where Kafarneh and his family were taking shelter, in which everyone except him was killed.

“We fled from danger to death,” Kafarneh said outside Gaza City’s Shifa hospital, where his head was decapitated and he was covered in plaster from shoulder to wrist. He was sitting on the footpath near hundreds of other people living in the open next to the hospital. Some people said they hoped its presence might provide them some protection from bombing.

“I’m homeless now,” said Yusuf Dare, 45, sitting on the ground near the hospital. He said, “Maybe it’s safe. Maybe. It’s a peaceful civilian place, right? Maybe not. Nowhere feels safe.”

Outside the hospital, some people had brought blankets or cardboard strips to sleep on, others had fallen directly on the bare ground. There were long queues of people to use some of the toilets inside the hospital.

According to the United Nations, more than 175,000 Palestinians have fled their homes since Saturday. Some aid agencies in Gaza say conditions are the worst they have seen since Hamas took power in 2007 following a brief civil war with forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, despite 16 years of continuous conflicts and an Israeli blockade. Are bad.

“The civilian loss this time… is unprecedented,” said Hisham Muhanna, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza.

At another hospital, Dr. Mohammed Abu Mugassib of Medecins Sans Frontiers said medical supplies have been in shortage for years. The intense Israeli siege means the rapidly dwindling stock will be depleted within weeks, he said.

“If things continue like this for a few more days, the health system will collapse,” he said after sleeping in the hospital. Because his own house was damaged in an explosion.

Due to power shortage, most of the water supplies in the enclave have been shut down. Men and boys stood near one of the few supplies in Khan Yunus, loading huge tanks onto three-wheeled rickshaws, hand-pulled carts and a small horse-drawn wagon.

A woman cries over the debris of her family home. Photo: AFP

The Palestinian Health Ministry said hospitals and other medical facilities running on fuel generators were expected to lose power in the next few days. The ministry said it feared sewage treatment facilities would also close, leading to an increase in waste and disease across the region.

‘The building fell on me’

Dawn in Gaza brings scenes of new destruction, with some entire blocks demolished by Israeli strikes.

Due to roads being damaged by bombing, civil defense workers are often unable to reach bomb sites and local residents must remove debris themselves.

“They brought down the whole building. I was sleeping here when it fell on top of me,” said one man who did not give his name and managed to escape from a collapsed building in Gaza’s Zitoun district.

He and another man were searching inside another building, using their phone lights they climbed an interior staircase to reach the ruined apartment where they pulled out several survivors and some bodies.

UN schools have become the main places of shelter for Palestinians who have fled their homes, with families crowded into classrooms, some sleeping on mattresses and some on blankets.

At a school in Gaza City, children were frightened by the sound of explosions, keeping them and their parents awake. Many people were sitting out in the open, fearing that they would be buried by air raids on concrete buildings.

In Khan Yunus, an ambulance stood at the end of a street with sirens blaring, a man sitting inside holding his young daughter in his lap, their eyes standing out from their dust-stained faces. “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid,” he whispered over and over again.