(Gaza) Mahmoud al-Sarsawi lies on an improvised bed under oxygen, surrounded by his grandchildren, far from home. On the second day of the war between Israel and Hamas, everyone is installed in a school in the Gaza Strip transformed into a makeshift shelter.
“We came here to escape Israeli strikes,” explains the old man from the Shujaiyya neighborhood, affirming that 70 people have taken refuge in the building since the day before.
“It was terrifying, we had no choice but to take shelter,” adds Mr. al-Sarsawi, 68, who fears running out of oxygen.
Forty-three other schools of the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) have opened their doors to Gazans.
PHOTO MOHAMMED SALEM, REUTERS
Palestinians who fled their homes following Israeli strikes arrive with their belongings to take shelter in a school run by the United Nations.
According to this UN agency, more than 20,000 residents of the Palestinian enclave have had to leave their homes due to the war between Hamas and Israel. The Palestinian Islamist movement launched an unprecedented offensive against Israel on Saturday morning, firing thousands of rockets and carrying out a series of deadly attacks.
In retaliation, Israeli forces launched air raids on the Gaza Strip, a small spit of land where 2.3 million people live.
“I say to the inhabitants of Gaza: ‘get out of there now because we are going to act everywhere with all our force’,” warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday evening, calling on the population to leave certain areas.
In two days, the death toll rose to more than a thousand deaths in total.
” Intolerable ”
“We collected what we needed from the house and rushed to the school,” said Amal al-Sarsawi, the old man’s daughter-in-law in a classroom. The family brought foam mattresses in the middle of which sit a gas stove, cans of food and a few hastily filled bags of clothes.
The 37-year-old woman says she is still in shock since she heard the first Israeli strikes and spent the night trying to reassure her five children, terrified by the noises.
“The situation is unbearable both psychologically and materially,” analyzes the mother, interviewed by AFP journalists.
PHOTO MOHAMMED SALEM, REUTERS
Many homes were partially damaged or destroyed by Israeli strikes. In the schoolyard, little boys are playing with a football, several women are trying to make screens out of clothes to have a little privacy.
Most of the displaced people come from the north of the territory and in particular from the east of Gaza City.
In one of the school’s corridors, a woman who had fled the northern Gaza Strip with 14 members of her family sits with her head in her hands. Unable to hold back tears, she said her family could not afford milk to feed two babies.
Incapacity
“We haven’t eaten anything since yesterday morning. We barely had time to grab a few clothes before leaving the house,” she says.
The World Food Program (WFP) said it was “deeply concerned” about the difficulties in accessing basic food products in impacted areas, calling for “secure humanitarian access” to distribute food to people displaced or in vulnerable situations. shelters.
“While most stores in affected areas of Palestine hold a month’s worth of food, these are likely to run out quickly as people buy food out of fear of prolonged conflict,” the statement said. organization in a press release.
In front of bakeries, hundreds of people queue for bread as explosions ring out around them.
PHOTO MOHAMMED ABED, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
People line up outside a bakery in Gaza City.
Leila Saker, who lives in one of the areas targeted by the Israeli army, spent the night with her family with her three children in the entrance of her building, the common areas being sometimes considered more secure places than the apartments .
“My children were scared. They screamed all night,” she says.