Deir-EL-Balah (Gaza Strip) : Gaza's 2.3 million civilians faced a deepening struggle for food, water and safety Sunday and braced for a looming invasion a week after Hamas militants launched a deadly assault on Israel. While hundreds of thousands sought to heed Israel's order to evacuate the north, others huddled at hospitals there.
Israeli forces, supported by a growing deployment of US warships in the region, positioned themselves along Gaza's border and drilled for what Israel said would be a broad campaign to dismantle the militant group. A week of blistering airstrikes have demolished entire neighbourhoods but failed to stem militant rocket fire into Israel.
The Gaza Health Ministry said 2,329 Palestinians have been killed since the fighting erupted, making this the deadlest of the five Gaza wars for Palestinians. The death toll on Sunday surpassed that of the third war between Israel and Hamas, in the summer of 2014, when 2,251 Palestinians, including 1,462 civilians, were killed, according to UN figures. That war lasted six weeks, and 74 people were killed on the Israeli side, including six civilians.
In Israel, pathologists and others at a military base worked through the Jewish Sabbath to identify the more than 1,300 Israelis and others killed in Hamas's October 7 assault. This is the deadliest war for Israel since the 1973 conflict with Egypt and Syria. Israel dropped leaflets over Gaza City in the north and renewed warnings on social media, ordering more than 1 million Palestinians almost half the territory's population to move south. The military says it is trying to clear away civilians ahead of a major campaign against Hamas militants in the north, including in what it said were underground hideouts in Gaza City. Hamas urged people to stay in their homes.
The UN and aid groups say such a rapid exodus, along with Israel's complete siege of the 40-kilometer-long (25-mile-long) coastal territory would cause untold human suffering. The World Health Organisation said the evacuation could be tantamount to a death sentence for the more than 2,000 patients in northern hospitals, including newborns in incubators and people in intensive care. Gaza's hospitals are expected to run out of fuel for emergency generators within two days, according to the UN, which said that that would endanger the lives of thousands of patients.
Gaza was already in a humanitarian crisis due to a growing shortage of water and medical supplies caused by the Israeli siege, which has also forced electrical plants to shut down without fuel. With some bakeries closing, residents complained of being unable to buy bread for their children. In Gaza City, Haifa Khamis al-Shurafa crowded into a car with six family members, fleeing to the south in the darkness. We don't deserve this, Shurafa said, before leaving her home city. We didn't kill anyone.
The Israeli military said hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had heeded the warning and headed south. It gave Palestinians a six-hour window that ended Saturday afternoon to travel safely within Gaza along two main routes, but has not set a firm deadline for the evacuation. Hundreds of relatives of the estimated 150 people captured by Hamas in Israel and taken to Gaza meanwhile gathered outside the Israeli Defence Ministry in Tel Aviv, demanding their release.
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This is my cry out to the world: Please help bring my family, my wife and three kids, said Avihai Brodtz of Kfar Azza. Many expressed anger toward the government, saying they still have no information about their loved ones. In a televised address Saturday night, Israel's chief military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, accused Hamas of trying to use civilians as human shields.
We are going to attack Gaza City very broadly soon, he said, without giving a timetable for the attack. The military said on Sunday an airstrike in southern Gaza had killed a Hamas commander blamed for the killings at Nirim, one of several communities Hamas had attacked in southern Israel. Israel said it struck over 100 military targets overnight, including command centres and rocket launchers.
Israel has called up some 360,000 military reserves and massed troops and tanks along the border with Gaza. Israelis living near the Gaza border, including residents of the town of Sderot, continued to be evacuated. Militants in Gaza have fired over 5,500 rockets since the hostilities erupted, many reaching reaching deep into Israel, as Israeli warplanes pound Gaza.
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said late Saturday that the US was moving a second carrier strike group, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, to the eastern Mediterranean, in a show of force meant to deter any allies of Hamas, such as Iran or Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, from seeking to widen the war. Hamas remained defiant. In a televised speech Saturday, Ismail Haniyeh, a top official, said that all the massacres will not break the Palestinian people.
