Israeli airstrikes hit Gaza on Monday, leveling mosques over the heads of worshipers, wiping out a busy marketplace full of shoppers and killing entire families, witnesses and authorities in Gaza said.
Five Israeli airstrikes destroyed the marketplace in the Jabaliya refugee camp, reducing it to rubble and killing dozens, authorities said. Further attacks hit four mosques in the Shati refugee camp, killing people praying there, it said. Witnesses said boys were playing soccer outside one of the mosques when the attack occurred.
The attacks came as part of Israel’s response to Saturday’s attack, when hundreds of Palestinian gunmen stormed across Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, killing civilians and soldiers in rampages and firing thousands of rockets into the center of the country. The militants are believed to be holding 150 hostages, both civilians and soldiers. According to Israeli officials, about 800 Israelis were killed and nearly 2,400 were injured.
Israel says its attacks target operations centers of Hamas, the Palestinian armed group that controls Gaza. It confirmed the attack on the mosques and said it targeted Hamas infrastructure or fighters in those buildings.
Israel has also said it has issued warnings about attacks and urged civilians to leave the country. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Gazans on Saturday evening to avoid potential Hamas targets. And warnings came before airstrikes hit and destroyed four high-rise buildings in Gaza on Saturday and Sunday.
Gazans say most of the attacks were indiscriminate and most occurred without warning. Additionally, Gazans say they have nowhere to go; There are no bomb shelters in the enclave, and residents cannot leave the enclave due to the 16-year land, air and sea blockade by Israel and Egypt, which restricts entry into the enclave and prevents most people from entering the enclave leave.
“The strikes started suddenly and without warning,” said Haneen Mousa, who lives near one of the mosques hit. “They targeted the mosque next to us and the concrete blocks, metal and walls all fell on us.”
At a news conference Monday morning, an Israeli military official declined to comment on whether the military had stopped issuing warnings before carrying out airstrikes on homes and residential buildings.
“We are at war,” said Lt. Col. Richard Hecht of the Israel Defense Forces. He added: “There has been a paradigm shift. We will do everything we can. But at the moment it is war and the scale is different.”
Since Israel began its airstrikes on Saturday, at least 687 Palestinians have been killed, Gaza’s health ministry said on Monday, and nearly 3,000 others have been injured. The victims included 140 children and 105 women, some of them entire families, the ministry said. It was not clear how many of the victims were fighters involved in the attack on Israel.
Mourning the death of a relative after the strike on Jabaliya.Credit: Mahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse – Getty Images
“The Israelis have lost their minds,” said Raji Sourani, a lawyer with the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, adding: “They are destroying entire families.”
The United Nations and Palestinian officials said at least two hospitals and several homes were also hit. According to the Ministry of Health, a hospital in northern Gaza has been taken out of service due to Israeli attacks in the region.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said Israeli attacks were “directly and systematically” aimed at ambulances and that at least nine had been hit since Saturday.
According to the UN humanitarian agency, Israeli airstrikes have damaged water, sanitation and hygiene facilities, affecting more than 400,000 people in Gaza. Strikes hit two schools run by the U.N. agency that helps Palestinian refugees, the United Nations said.
The years-long blockade of the Gaza Strip has led to an unemployment rate of nearly 50 percent and a deterioration in the living conditions, health system and infrastructure of the more than two million Palestinians living there.
On Monday, Israel’s defense minister announced a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip, declaring that “no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel” would be allowed there. Telephone and internet connections were disrupted in many parts of the Gaza Strip on Monday after an Israeli attack hit the Palestine Telecommunications Company building in the city center.
Amid widespread fear in Gaza of the Israeli response, many people from other parts of the blockaded enclave had come to seek refuge in the center of Jabaliya in the northern part of the strip, where shops and houses surround the market area. Monday’s strike broke out as vendors and customers filled the market and stocked up on food and produce.
Videos shared on social media and circulated by Palestinian news outlets show bodies scattered in the rubble of a recently busy market selling fruits and vegetables and other goods.
Sixty people died, according to a Red Crescent medic who was not authorized to speak to the media and requested anonymity. There was no immediate confirmation from Gaza’s health ministry.
Broken concrete and twisted metal from surrounding buildings filled the square, where people ran through the rubble and clouds of smoke looking for survivors. As a fire burned at the edge of the square, a police officer covered in blood and dust sat down at his side.
“Is he dead? Is he dead?” In one video, a man could be heard screaming.
Ms. Mousa, her seven children and her husband ran from their home as debris from the strike fell on the mosque next door and its roof and walls began to collapse. A neighbor, a young girl, was killed, Ms. Mousa said, and residents struggled to dig her body out from under the rubble, she said.
“If there had been a warning, we would have come out sooner; Instead, three floors above us suddenly fell,” Ms Mousa said.
On Monday afternoon, neighbors combed through the rubble of the large Al-Sousi Mosque, which was barely recognizable as a place of worship. Abu Uday, 47, a father of nine, lived next to the Gharbia Mosque.
“No warnings, nothing – before we knew it, the missiles hit,” he said. “All the glass shattered above us and the stones fell on us.”
Sumaya Ghabin, 30, was jolted awake around 6 a.m. by the sound of an Israeli attack on the Gharbia Mosque, about two blocks from her home and also near the Al Sousi Mosque.
“We woke up to find the house full of dust and shrapnel,” she said. The windows had been blown out, she added, and her 10-year-old daughter was hiding under the covers, screaming. “It seems like they are hitting all the mosques.”
Patrick Kingsley and Samar Abu Elouf contributed reporting.