DEVASTATION GROWS
Israel had global sympathy when it launched a campaign to annihilate the Hamas militant group that controls Gaza after fighters stormed across the border fence on Oct 7, killing 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, and seizing 240 hostages.
But since then, Israel has besieged the enclave and laid much of it to waste. Gaza’s health ministry said on Wednesday at least 18,608 people have been killed and 50,594 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since Oct 7. Many thousands more are feared lost in the rubble or beyond the reach of ambulances.
Warplanes again bombed the length of Gaza and aid officials said the arrival of winter rain worsened conditions for hundreds of thousands sleeping rough in makeshift tents. The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been made homeless.
In Rafah, in Gaza’s south where hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter, the bodies of a family killed in an overnight air strike were being laid out in the rain in bloodied white shrouds, including several small children. One, the size of a newborn, was wrapped in a pink blanket.
Ahmed Abu Reyash collected the bodies of his nieces, aged 5 and 7. As he walked through the street carrying one of the girls, a relative tugged at the shroud and shouted: “These are children! Children! Do they kill anyone other than children? No! These are innocents! They killed them with their dirty hands!”
At a tent camp in Rafah, Yasmin Mhani said she had woken up at night to find her youngest child, who is seven months old, soaking wet. Her family of five is sharing a single blanket after their home was destroyed by an Israeli air strike. One child was killed and they lost all their possessions.
“This is the fifth place we have had to move to, fleeing from one place to another, with nothing but a t-shirt on,” she said, hanging wet clothes outside her tent.
Source: CNA
