According to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, over 5,000 people have been dead in the embattled Palestinian territory since Israel commenced its ferocious air campaign more than two weeks ago.
The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza has worsened as a result of the war sparked by the October 7 Hamas attack, which Israeli officials believe killed over 1,400 civilians who were gunned down, stabbed, or burned by the Islamist terrorists.
Hamas also took more than 200 hostages.
On a day when Israel’s army recorded more than 300 fresh strikes in 24 hours, Gaza’s health ministry estimated the dead toll had risen to 5,000, with nearly 40% of those killed being children.
Thousands of structures have been destroyed, and over one million people have been displaced in the besieged zone, which has been deprived of water, food, and other basic necessities.
The third convoy in three days bringing badly needed aid landed into Gaza from Egypt on Monday through Rafah, Gaza’s main non-Israeli entrance.
The US, which facilitated the entry of the aid convoys, has promised a “continued flow” of relief products into Gaza, despite UN assistance organizations saying significantly more is required.
Fighting continued unabated overnight after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged once more that Israel would “erase Hamas” and a full-scale ground invasion loomed.
According to Gaza’s Hamas-controlled government media office, “more than 60 people were martyred in the raids” last night, including 17 in a single strike on a house in Gaza’s north, and at least 10 more were killed in subsequent strikes early Monday.
The Israeli military said it had hit “over 320 military targets in the Gaza Strip” in the past 24 hours.
It said the targets “included tunnels containing Hamas terrorists, dozens of operational command centres” as well as “military compounds and observation posts” used by Islamic Jihad, another militant group.
Call for blood donations
Rafah resident, Mohammed Sabalah said he had returned home from the local mosque after dawn prayers on Monday and that “a quarter of an hour later there was a bombing”.
“We couldn’t see anything because of the thick smoke. We thank God that we’ve emerged safe and sound” with “only a few windows and doors destroyed,” Sabalah said.
Israeli forces have massed along the Gaza border, and smaller units have already conducted limited incursions, targeting Hamas and seeking to rescue hostages, the number of whom Israel now estimates to be 222.
According to the Army, a 19-year-old Israeli soldier was killed and three others were injured in one of these operations, which attempted to “dismantle terror infrastructure and locate missing persons and bodies.”
Tensions have risen in the occupied West Bank, where, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry, 95 Palestinians have been killed in incidents involving Israeli security forces or settlers since the war began in Gaza.
Israel kept evacuating southern communities near Gaza.
Orit Cohen, 29, a native of Sderot, an Israeli town just near Gaza’s northern border, told AFP: “I came to pick up my mother who until then refused to leave the city. But the army is bombing right on the other side.
“I was afraid for her and I came to get her out of here.”
In Gaza, where many have been injured, the health ministry released a statement saying, “Citizens are urged to go to hospitals and blood bank branches immediately to donate blood.”
The public has been increasingly concerned about the 2.4 million inhabitants imprisoned inside the 40-kilometer (25-mile) long coastal strip, which was already blockaded and destitute prior to the war.
Children murdered in an Israeli air attack in the southern city of Khan Yunis were laid to rest in a makeshift burial on Monday, while nearby Rafah, men were filling plastic jerrycans from now-scarce safe drinking water containers.
US President Joe Biden brokered the passage of aid convoys with Egyptian and Israeli leaders in talks last week — but the United Nations estimates Gaza needs about 100 trucks of relief goods every day.
UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said Sunday’s delivery of food, water and medical supplies was “another small glimmer of hope for the millions of people in dire need of humanitarian aid.
“But they need more, much more.”
Israel has rejected the entry of fuel into Gaza, fearing Hamas could use it for weapons and explosives.
This has sparked warnings that soon Gaza’s ambulances, hospital incubators for infants and water desalination plants will soon stop functioning.