As Israeli military retaliates, Palestinians say civilians are paying the price

By Isabel Debre, GAZA CITY, Gaza

Hallways filled with screaming voices. A terrible stench in the air. Wounded people streaming through the doors. Lifeless bodies and bags of body parts arriving in bedsheets.

Palestinians remove a dead body from the rubble of a building after an Israeli airstrike Jebaliya refugee camp, Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 9, 2023. 

The scene at Shifa Hospital was a grisly reflection of the chaos around it. Even as workers mopped up blood and relatives rushed children with shrapnel wounds into surgery, explosions thundered in central Gaza City.

Over the last five days, Israeli warplanes have pummeled the blockaded strip with an intensity that its war-weary residents had never experienced. The airstrikes have killed over 1,100 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Officials have not said how many civilians are among the dead, but aid workers warn that Israel’s decision to impose a “complete siege” on the crowded enclave of 2.3 million people is spawning a humanitarian catastrophe that touches nearly every one of them.

The airstrikes have transformed lively neighborhoods into wastelands of rubble strewn with bodies. There is no clean water. And there is darkness — the territory’s only power plant ran out of fuel Wednesday, leaving only generators that won’t last long.

“This is an unprecedented scope of destruction,” said Miriam Marmur, a spokeswoman for Gisha, an Israeli human rights group. “Israeli decisions to cut electricity, fuel, food and medicine supplies severely compound the risks to Palestinians and threaten to greatly increase the toll in human life.”

Palestinians, including some journalists, carry the bodies of two Palestinian reporters, Mohammed Soboh and Said al-Tawil, who were killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023

The Israeli bombardment has escalated in retaliation for Hamas militants’ unprecedented multifront attack Saturday. The Israeli military says more than 1,200 were killed and dozens more abducted, and the government declared war, promising a punishing campaign to destroy Hamas’ military capabilities.

But Palestinians say Israel has largely unleashed that fury on civilians — a population that has lived for 16 years under a crippling blockade imposed by Israel and through four devastating wars and other hostilities.

The strikes across Gaza, from its farming villages on the northern border to upmarket towers in the heart of Gaza City, have killed 171 women and at least 326 people under 18, the Gaza Health Ministry said. Eight journalists have been killed, local media organizations said, and six medics, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees reports 11 of its staffers among the dead.

During past wars, news of a single shattered neighborhood could shake the international community. This time, Israeli airstrikes are rapidly laying waste to vast swaths of Gaza, and casualties are mounting too fast for anyone to keep up.

“In previous escalations, there would always be some time, even a half-hour, without airstrikes,” said Nebal Farsakh, spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent. “But now, there is not a single minute. That’s why the casualties keep going up and up.”

The stark toll is palpable at Gaza hospitals.

Even in ordinary times, they’re poorly supplied. Now, there’s a shortage of everything from bandages to intravenous fluids, beds to essential drugs, said Richard Brennan, regional director of the World Health Organization.

“It’s almost as bad as it gets,” Brennan said. “It’s not just the damage, the destruction. It’s that psychological pressure. The constant shelling ... the loss of one’s colleagues.”

An airstrike hit one of the territory’s biggest hospitals, in northern Beit Hanoun, rendering it inoperable. Shrapnel has flown into seven other hospitals and 10 U.N. emergency shelters, according to the World Health Organization and United Nations.

 Smoke rises from an explosion caused by Israeli airstrikes on the border between Egypt and Rafah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023. As Israeli warplanes pummel Gaza to avenge the Hamas attack, Palestinians say the military has largely unleashed its fury on civilians.

At Shifa Hospital, doctors battled to keep the place running. Fuel supplies ran low, and panic ensued outside. As explosions crashed, women and children streamed into the streets with their belongings, some of them barefoot.

From the hospital corridor, Muhammad Al-Gharabli recalled four missiles crashing into a mosque in the seaside Shati refugee camp Monday, decapitating his 2-year-old son, Mohammed, and sending shrapnel into the leg of his 5-year-old son, Lotfi.

Al-Gharabli said that when he regained consciousness, he saw the bodies of dozens of neighbors strewn over the ruins of their homes. He recognized the still and bloodied face of his next-door neighbor, a car mechanic.

“I can’t sleep from the horror,” he said.

In many cases, residents say, the Israeli military has bombed apartment towers without the usual warning shots, wiping out families in their homes. Israel says it is going after only militant targets and does its utmost to avoid civilian casualties — a claim the Palestinians reject.

The Gaza Health Ministry has reported 22 incidents in which airstrikes have killed many members of the same extended family, without providing details. The Israeli military rarely comments on individual airstrikes.

For the densely populated Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, the mayhem began early Wednesday. Jaber Weshah said there was no warning when a strike pummeled the multistory building next door.

Few survived. Some people remained trapped under the rubble, awaiting ambulances for hours, Weshah said.

The death toll from that strike reached 12, residents said. Among the dead was a bookseller, his wife and two toddler daughters; a landlord, his son and his disabled sister; and six members of one family, leaving only its patriarch.

“It was an inferno,” said Weshah, a 73-year-old human rights activist. “If you’re trying to confront Hamas, I get it, you can do that. But you have the best military technology and you can’t differentiate between who is a civilian and who is not?”

When Israeli airstrikes pounded Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, at least 50 people — including two entire families — were killed and much of the camp razed, health authorities and residents said. The Israeli miliary said that the targets it struck “were only directed at Hamas situation rooms and operational apartments.”

One of the families killed were the Masouds — two public schoolteachers and their sons, ages 12 and 10 — according to neighbor Khalil Abu Yahia.

“They would sacrifice their lives to care for their children,” he said of parents Alaa and Atallah.

The morning of the strike, the family of four huddled close in the one room, far from the windows.

Abu Yahia knows this, he said, because that’s how all four bodies were found.