New Israeli raids hit the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, partly transformed into a field of ruins, in response to the bloody attack launched by Hamas, which traumatized Israel and triggered a war in which the dead already numbered in the thousands.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the massive offensive of unprecedented scale launched from Gaza against Israel at dawn on October 7 as “savagery not seen since the Holocaust,” promising that his country would “ overcome with strength, enormous strength”
This attack caused astonishment in the country, where at least 169 soldiers were killed in four days, according to the army, and where stories from survivors or witnesses recounting scenes of extreme violence are multiplying.
Israel responded by relentlessly shelling the Palestinian enclave, mobilizing 300,000 reservists and deploying tens of thousands of troops around Gaza and on its northern border with Lebanon.
The Gaza Strip, a poor and cramped enclave with 2.3 million inhabitants, is now under siege. Israel has cut off water, electricity and food supplies there.
During the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, bombings left at least 30 dead in the Palestinian enclave, affecting dozens of buildings, factories, mosques and stores, the Hamas government announced. According to the Israeli army, several targets of the Islamist movement were hit.
On Wednesday morning, women, their children in their arms, were fleeing among the rubble of collapsed buildings, in devastated streets of Gaza City.
Israeli warplanes also bombed an Islamic university in the Gaza Strip linked to Hamas, raising thick clouds of dust into the sky as the buildings collapsed, according to an AFP correspondent.
Israel announced on Tuesday that it had partially regained control of its border with the Gaza Strip. On the northern border, the Israeli army struck southern Lebanon once again on Wednesday in response to rocket fire claimed by pro-Iranian Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas.
The offensive has sparked widespread international condemnation, as well as concerns over the possibility of a ground assault on Gaza.
Threats to hostages
The death toll from attacks in Israel rose to more than “1,200 dead,” the Israeli army announced on Wednesday, which also reported 169 soldiers killed. More than 2,700 people were injured and dozens of others are officially listed as “hostages or missing”.
On the Palestinian side, 900 people died and more than 4,500 were injured, according to local authorities. Hamas announced that two of its senior officials had been killed by Israeli strikes.
The Israeli army also announced on Tuesday that it had recovered the bodies of 1,500 Hamas fighters in areas neighboring Gaza over which it had regained control.
The Israeli Air Force also indicated on Wednesday that “dozens of combat aircraft recently attacked more than 200 targets in the Al Furkan neighborhood” in Gaza City.
Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, is threatening to execute hostages kidnapped in Israel. Among them are young people captured during a music festival, where fighters burst into on Saturday, killing 250 people according to an NGO.
“Two murdered children”
In the kibbutz of Beeri, where another attack left around a hundred dead, the fighters “shot at everyone”, “they murdered children, babies, elderly people, everyone in cold blood”, testified Moti Bukjin, the spokesperson for Zaka, an NGO which participated in the collection of the bodies.
“I’ve never seen anything worse. I broke down when I saw the bodies of two murdered children,” said a 24-year-old Israeli officer, Omer Barak, in the Kibbutz of Kfar Aza where 100 people were killed.
At dawn on Saturday, after crossing the border barrier that Israel considered impassable, hundreds of Hamas fighters rushed from the Gaza Strip into localities in the south of the country, going from house to house, killing citizens. or removing them.
The land, air and sea offensive surprised Israel in the middle of Shabbat, the weekly Jewish rest, and on the last day of the Sukkot holiday.
US President Joe Biden promised Tuesday that he would help his ally defend himself against “pure evil”.
Hamas denounced “inflammatory” remarks, judging that the American president was trying to “cover up Israel’s crimes”.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected in Israel on Thursday.
Hospitals overwhelmed
In hospitals in the Gaza Strip, the situation is catastrophic. The al-Chifa hospital in Gaza City is overflowing with injured people. “Some die long before” being able to receive treatment, says a doctor.
The UN said the total siege of the Gaza Strip, where more than 263,000 people have already been displaced by war, was “prohibited” by international humanitarian law.
The Hamas offensive was launched 50 years and one day after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war which took Israel by surprise and left 2,600 dead on the Israeli side in three weeks.
The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, announced that they had launched this offensive to “put an end to the crimes of the occupation”, in reference to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.
Israel withdrew its troops and evacuated settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 after occupying the territory since 1967.
But it has maintained control of airspace and territorial waters and imposed a blockade since 2007, strictly controlling the passage of goods and people between Israel and the enclave.