Tag: In Pictures

Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip – Israeli forces continue to pound the Gaza Strip on the 60th day of its war on the besieged coastal enclave.

The sky in the town of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza is grey with the aftermath of relentless Israeli ground attacks and aerial bombardment.

A fire breaks out in the middle of the street, littered with rubble. But that does not deter dozens of people from gathering at the site of a bombed building.

The crowd of men are attempting to rescue the survivors and retrieve the bodies of those killed in the three-storey Abu Musbih building bombed by Israel.

“We need stretchers,” shouts a man. “Someone, find us stretchers.”

Near him lies the lifeless body of a man, almost entirely covered by debris. He is pulled out by three men and taken on blankets being used as stretchers.

The attack on Tuesday afternoon struck the building when about 150 people were inside, most of them displaced families from other parts of Gaza.

According to Gaza’s health ministry, 45 people have been killed and at least 50 others wounded. Some of the dead remain buried under the rubble.

The injured were transported in civilian cars, tuk-tuks and ambulances to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

Meanwhile, a representative of the World Health Organization in the Palestinian Territories said the situation in Gaza is “getting worse every hour” as Israel intensifies its bombing of the enclave’s southern areas.

“I want to make clear that we are facing a growing humanitarian catastrophe,” Rik Peeperkorn said.

More than 16,200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces since October 7 and about 42,000 others wounded.

The number of displaced people arriving at Nasser Medical Complex continues to increase, with new shelters being set up in the facility’s car park and many people sleeping on the ground in the open.

The hospital located in Khan Younis, where teams from Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) provide surgical care to patients with trauma and burn injuries, has also seen a constant influx of new patients, pushing its capacity to breaking point.

“The hospital has been receiving multiple severely injured patients nearly every hour,” said Chris Hook, MSF medical coordinator in Khan Younis. “With the situation as it is in the hospital – there is no available space any more – it really is a terrible situation. Everyone is genuinely worried about what will come next.”

Israel’s military said its fighter jets and helicopters struck targets in Gaza including “tunnel shafts, command centers and weapons storage facilities”. It acknowledged “extensive aerial attacks in the Khan Younis area”.

“In a military campaign that has lasted weeks, with only a brief respite, the speed and scale of the bombing continue to plumb the depths of brutality,” said MSF’s Hook. “Almost two million people are left without options. The only solution is an immediate and sustained ceasefire and the unrestricted supply of aid to the entirety of the Gaza Strip.”

Israel’s attacks on Gaza have stretched into a second day after a seven-day truce with Hamas ended as Qatar and Egypt mediate talks to renew a pause in hostilities.

The United Nations said on Saturday that the fighting would worsen the extreme humanitarian emergency in Gaza.

“Hell on Earth has returned to Gaza,” said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office in Geneva.

“Today, in a matter of hours, scores were reportedly killed and injured. Families were told to evacuate, again. Hopes were dashed,” UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said, adding that children, women and men of Gaza had “nowhere safe to go and very little to survive on”.

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza said Israeli tanks have not stopped shelling the enclave and gunboats are attacking its coastline.

“Houses have been targeted. At least three mosques were hit. Areas across the Gaza Strip – the north, south and centre – have all been targeted.”

The Israeli army said on Saturday that it hit more than 400 targets overnight, including in the Khan Younis area in the south, to which tens of thousands of civilians evacuated over the past month.