- By Adnan Elbursh, BBC Arabic & Alys Davies, BBC News
- in Khan Younis and London
December 1, 2023, 1:36 p.m. GMT
Updated 18 minutes ago
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Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced in Gaza
The resumption of fighting between Israel and Hamas is “the nightmare that everyone deeply feared,” says the United Nations.
A temporary ceasefire expired at 07:00 a.m. (0500 GMT), with both warring sides blaming each other for the resumption of hostilities.
Since then, more than 100 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
The renewed fighting sparked a mix of fear and anger among Gazans.
On Friday morning, heavy gunfire was heard in areas infiltrated by the Israeli military in the northern Gaza Strip and clashes broke out between Israeli soldiers and Hamas militants.
After the ceasefire, the pace of combat did not appear to have slowed down, jet fighters and reconnaissance aircraft were deployed.
Areas targeted by the airstrikes included northwest Gaza and Khan Younis in the south, where hundreds of thousands of people fled early in the war to escape fighting in the north. Homes in the city were attacked – including a house very close to Nasser Hospital, where the BBC’s Arab team was based.
“At around 6:30 a.m. the drones started flying,” Mohammad Ghalaiyini, a Briton currently in Khan Younis with his family, said in a voice message to the BBC. “I think around 7:30 a.m. the bombing started and every 10, 15, 20 minutes there was non-stop bombing.”
Leaflets dropped by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) warned that areas east of Khan Younis and Salah al-Din were “dangerous” combat zones and urged people in some parts to seek emergency shelters further south in Rafah, near the Egyptian border .
Meanwhile, rockets fired from Gaza into southern Israel were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system.
The renewed clashes are “catastrophic for the people of Gaza,” James Elder, spokesman for the UN children’s fund Unicef, told the BBC.
“There was an attack 50 to 100 meters from here. There are ambulances there, I see the clouds of smoke,” he told the BBC’s Newsday program from a hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
Mr Elder said Nasser Hospital – which he said was the largest functioning hospital in Gaza – was “overcrowded with children and people with war wounds recovering from the last attack”.
He described how many families had slept on hospital mattresses for weeks.
“This hospital cannot possibly cope with the increase in battlefield wounds with more children with burns and these horrific shrapnel injuries.”
Other UN aid agencies have described similar conditions in other hospitals in Gaza.
At a UN briefing via video link from Gaza, Rob Holden, a senior emergency official at the World Health Organization (WHO), said the situation at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City was “like a horror movie” even before the bombing began again.
His team, which visited the site earlier this week, reported patients with “horrendous injuries” lying on the ground and “covered in blood” while the bodies of those killed lay lined up in the parking lot outside.
According to the WHO, only 18 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are “minimal to partially functional.”
“Gaza’s health system has been crippled by the ongoing hostilities,” said Richard Peeperkorn, the WHO representative in the Palestinian territories. “We are extremely concerned about the resumption of violence.”
On Friday morning, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Hamas had opened fire on Israel, violating the terms of the temporary ceasefire agreement and leading to the resumption of hostilities.
An IDF spokesman told the BBC that Hamas had also violated the hostage agreement by not releasing all the women and children it was holding.
However, Hamas blamed Israel for the resumption of fighting and said it had refused “to accept all offers to release more hostages.”
More on the Israel-Gaza war
There is widespread concern about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which is likely to worsen as fighting resumes.
There are severe shortages of cooking gas, food and water. The shops are empty. And there are not enough aid supplies to distribute to the displaced.
Many sleep in tents. They have told the BBC they are struggling to cope with the cold weather conditions and are calling for more help, including the supply of warm clothing.
They also say very little water, food and medicine is reaching hospitals.
Aid deliveries from Egypt through the Rafah border crossing have been suspended since the end of the ceasefire on Friday morning. The number of trucks able to reach Gaza had increased during the seven-day ceasefire. Nevertheless, they made up only a small proportion of the relief trucks that entered the area daily before the outbreak of war.
According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, more than 14,800 people have been killed since Israel began its campaign against Hamas in Gaza, including about 6,000 children.
It began bombing the territory after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping about 240 others. Last week, more than 100 of these hostages were released in exchange for the release of 240 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons.
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Watch: How rockets and destruction quickly returned to Gaza