Israel’s Escalation Turns Brutal: Massacres Reported Across the Entire Gaza Strip
As Israeli airstrikes intensify across Gaza, Palestinian rescue workers retrieve bodies from under the rubble with bare hands amid a collapsing health system and forced displacement.
Watan-Palestinian Civil Defense workers, aided by local volunteers, are tirelessly working to retrieve bodies from beneath the rubble of a destroyed home in the Turkman area of Al-Shuja’iya neighborhood, east of Gaza City. Using primitive tools, they move swiftly, trying to save anyone who might still be alive.
Most of the bodies recovered are of children, crushed or suffocated under the debris. They are quickly examined, then placed in white body bags. If someone among the rescuers can identify them, their names are written on the bags before the search continues for more victims. This is the content of one of the videos distributed by the Palestinian Civil Defense yesterday.
In other videos, shared on Palestinian social media accounts, another location—Dar Al-Arqam School in eastern Gaza City—shows the retrieval of charred bodies, many of them also children. The footage is filled with sounds of screams and cries for help, some reportedly coming from people burning alive due to Israeli bombs.
Gaza Massacres: Over 112 Palestinians Killed, Majority Women and Children
The massacres carried out by the State of Israel on Thursday alone resulted in the killing of over 112 Palestinians at the time of writing. The most prominent was the massacre at Dar Al-Arqam School in Al-Tuffah neighborhood, east of Gaza City, which the Israeli military admitted to bombing. That attack killed 31 Palestinians, including at least 18 children, a woman, an elderly man, and injured over 100 others.
Another massacre occurred in the Al-Shuja’iya neighborhood, also in eastern Gaza City, where Israeli forces bombed a residential block between Al-Mansoura and Al-Muntar streets, killing 25 Palestinians and injuring dozens more.
In Khan Younis, southern Gaza, Israeli forces bombed multiple homes belonging to the Sharab family in the Al-Manara neighborhood, southeast of the city. This attack killed 17 Palestinians and injured dozens, including women and children.
Emergency and rescue teams faced extreme difficulties in recovering the victims’ bodies due to the lack of equipment and basic resources.
“Rafah Under Fire: Gaza’s Humanitarian Crisis Deepens Amid Israeli Expansion”
Meanwhile, the Israeli military continues expanding its ground incursion into Rafah, after threatening the city’s entire population with forced displacement. Israeli warplanes bombed numerous areas in the city, and the fate of families who were unable to evacuate remains unknown.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the army would fully occupy Rafah and take control of a new axis he named the “Morag Axis.”
The Palestinian Ministry of Health once again warned of the dire state of the healthcare system in Gaza. In a statement, it said that hospitals and health facilities are operating far beyond their capacity amid a severe shortage of medicines, medical supplies, and the fuel needed to power equipment and generators.
Riham Al-Ja’fari, Director of Advocacy and Support at the international organization ActionAid, said the humanitarian situation in Gaza has become “beyond catastrophic,” describing it as unprecedented due to the total collapse of the health system, lack of food, clean water, and fuel.
On the eve of Palestinian Children’s Day, data released by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics revealed that Gaza is bleeding childhood. The ongoing war has stolen children’s dreams and buried their innocence under rubble. Children and women have accounted for more than 60% of the total 50,021 Palestinian casualties, including 17,954 children.
