They have no electricity, water or food: eyewitnesses in the Gaza Strip report desperate scenes there following airstrikes by the Israeli army. Driving a car is no longer imaginable, says Tahani Jaber. That’s why she was traveling on foot. She left her children with her mother.
She says she needs medicine for her baby, who has a high fever for the second day in a row. “I feel like I’m getting closer and closer to death, but the children’s lives are more important.”
Terrorists on behalf of Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, attacked Israel on Saturday. They carried out the worst bloodbath in the state’s history, murdering dozens of civilians, including 260 music festival attendees. The Israeli army says it has since bombed hundreds of Palestinian Islamic organization positions in the densely populated area of the Mediterranean coast. According to the local health ministry, at least 1,354 people were killed. More than 6,000 other people were injured. The Israeli military accuses Hamas of using people as shields and hiding among the civilian population or storing weapons.
Mohammed Baroud from Al-Nasr district reports that entire streets were reduced to rubble following Israeli airstrikes. Anyone currently going out could “be bombed and die at any moment,” says Baroud. “We can’t change or buy important things for our children.” After each attack there is a new attack. “What’s happening here is crazy.” According to eyewitnesses, devastating destruction was caused in districts such as Al-Rimal, Al-Mukhabarat and Al-Tuffah.
Numerous Palestinians in the isolated coastal strip, home to more than two million people, had to abandon their homes. So did Jaber Al-Sufi. He says he spends the night with his family in a protection center in central Gaza. However, he fears the situation could worsen further “as attacks on the Gaza Strip continue to increase.”