Israeli warplanes hammered the Gaza Strip neighbourhood by neighbourhood on Tuesday, reducing buildings to rubble and sending people scrambling to find safety in the tiny, sealed-off territory now suffering severe retaliation for the deadly weekend attack by Hamas militants.
Humanitarian organisations pleaded for the creation of corridors to get aid into Gaza, warning that hospitals overwhelmed with the wounded were running out of supplies. Israel has stopped entry of food, fuel and medicines into Gaza, and the sole remaining access from Egypt shut down Tuesday after airstrikes hit near the border crossing.
The war, which has already claimed at least 1,800 lives on both sides, is only expected to escalate. The weekend attack that Hamas said was retribution for worsening Palestinian suffering under Israeli occupation has fired Israel’s determination to crush the group’s hold in Gaza — hiking risks of an expanded regional conflict.
Hamas militants stormed into Israel on Saturday morning, slaying hundreds of residents in homes and streets near the Gaza border and bringing gunbattles to Israeli towns for the first time in decades. Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza hold about 150 soldiers and civilians hostage, according to Israel.
Israel was now stepping up its offensive. It expanded the mobilisation of reservists to 360,000 on Tuesday, according to the country’s media. After days of fighting, Israel’s military said Tuesday morning that it had regained effective control over areas Hamas attacked in its south, and of the Gaza border.
A looming question is whether Israel will launch a ground assault into Gaza — a 40 kilometer-long (25 mile-long) strip of land wedged among Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea that is home to 2.3 million people and has been governed by Hamas since 2007.
On Tuesday, a large part of Gaza City’s Rimal neighbourhood was reduced to rubble after warplanes bombarded it for hours the night before. Residents found buildings torn in half or demolished to mounds of concrete and rebar. Cars were flattened and trees burned out on residential streets transformed into moonscapes.
Palestinian Civil Defence forces pulled Abdullah Musleh out of his basement together with 30 others after their apartment building was flattened.
“I sell toys, not missiles,’’ the 46-year-old said, weeping. “I want to leave Gaza. Why do I have to stay here? I lost my home and my job.
The Israeli military said it struck hundreds of targets in Rimal, an upscale district home to ministries of the Hamas-run government, universities, media organisations and the aid agency offices.
In a new tactic, Israel is warning civilians to evacuate neighbourhood after neighbourhood, and then inflicting devastation, in what could be a prelude to a ground offensive. On Tuesday, the military told residents of the nearby al-Daraj neighbourhood to evacuate, and soon after new explosions rocked the area, and Rimal, continuing after nightfall. One strike hit Gaza City’s seaport, setting fishing boats aflame.
“There is no safe place in Gaza right now, you see decent people being killed every day,” Hasan Jabar, a Gaza journalist, said after three Palestinian journalists were killed in the Rimal bombardment. “I am genuinely afraid for my life.”
