The Southern Gaza Strip is presently reeling under heavy Israeli bombardment, with UN officials warning that no place in Gaza is safe amid Israel’s fresh air raids and evacuation orders.
As a result of Israel’s conduct of hostilities, and its orders for people to leave the north and parts of the south, hundreds of thousands are being confined in ever smaller areas in southern Gaza without proper sanitation, access to sufficient food, water, and health supplies, even as bombs rain down around them.
Winter is harder than this ongoing war where we live inside tents, a primordial life. We are living like our ancestors lived before 1948.
Everyone is struggling due to the winter and the tents are already submerged.
We’re trying to adapt to our current situation as much as we can.
Gazan Resident
So we have the perfect storm for disease outbreak, remembering of course, in this specific case of Gaza, Israel, as the occupying power, it is they who have to provide food, water, medicine.
So now, given we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people right now, this minute, who are moving somewhere with bombardments at scale, 200 A day yesterday, aerial bombardments.
As we speak the only possible way to create safe spaces in Gaza that are truly safe, that protect human life, is for the hell to stop raining down from the sky.
James Elder, UNICEF Spokesperson
The first round of violence comes after Israel refused to renew a short-lived truce. We saw the exchange of Palestinian prisoners with Israeli captives.
Immediately after the truce expired, even though talks were underway to extend it, Israel began pounding the crowded southern Gaza and drove up the death toll after the short-lived truce deal.
I’m here for the mommies. I’m here to remind us how hard it is to run full speed when you’re pregnant, how debilitating it is to decide if you’re going to hold your toddler’s hand or a parent’s hand as you flee.
Africa Stewart, Doctors Without Borders
According to the United Nations 1.8 million people, nearly 80 percent of Gaza’s population have been internally displaced amid the Israeli aggression.
There are still no safe places to go to and the bomb shelters are already teeming with people.
The Israeli military has released a map in which the Gaza Strip is divided into hundreds of small areas. The map is intended to facilitate orders to evacuate people to specific areas.
The plan is part of a larger scheme by Israel to depopulate the Gaza Strip and push the Palestinian population into Egypt.
The situation is getting worse by the hour. There is intensified bombing going on all around, including here in southern areas, Khan Yunus and even in Rafah.
What I’ve seen over the last couple of days is a vastly increasing number of IDPs going from the so called middle area, and even now, the southern areas towards further to the south.
Richard Peeperkorn, WHO Representative in Gaza
While the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip continues, Palestinian resistance fighters have been carrying out retaliatory operations and dealing severe blows to the invading troops.
Resistance fighters have killed dozens of Israeli soldiers inside their camp in central Gaza. The resistance fighters infiltrated the base and planted explosives killing the Israeli troops.
Meanwhile, battles are raging on in seven areas of Gaza.
Israeli troops have attacked the vicinity of a hospital and residential buildings in Khan Yunis, leaving dozens of Palestinians dead and dozens injured.
The military wing of Hamas known as the Al-Qassam Brigades says a number of occupying regime soldiers were killed in Eastern Khan Yunis.
The military brigades added that its fighters have also struck several Israeli tanks, personnel carriers, and, military bulldozers, with armor-piercing shells east and north of Khan Yunis.
Analysts say Palestinian fighters are using increasingly more sophisticated tactics as they battle Israel’s military throughout the Gaza Strip.
Hamas officials say Israel is sinking deeper and deeper into the swamp of Gaza, stressing that the occupying regime failed to achieve a single victory.
Osama Hamdan, Hamas representative in Lebanon, says Israel’s invasion of Gaza is just a thirst for blood that will go unquenched, and that the real objective of the occupying regime is to eliminate the Palestinian people and their cause, which is an impossibility.
Despite claims by Israeli officials it is now widely believed that Hamas is still largely intact, despite Tel Aviv’s stated goal of eliminating the resistance group.
Abu Hamza, spokesperson for the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement (PIJ), has also said that the Palestinian resistance is in very good condition and maintains readiness and strength to confront the enemy on all fronts in Gaza.
Israel has confirmed that 90 of its troops have been killed since the ground operation in Gaza commenced about five weeks ago.
However, fatalities amongst Israeli soldiers are believed to be much higher as Tel Aviv doesn’t disclose the exact figure.
Source: Press TV
