GAZA — From under a crushed house, people carry out the body of a toddler; a woman weeps over a row of corpses wrapped in white; the latest casualties arrive in hospitals already overflowing with the wounded and displaced; people queue for hours to get a few liters of water, which they will share with dozens of others.
A month into Israel's devastating military assault on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Palestinians stuck inside the besieged enclave face daily suffering of a scale, intensity and repetitiveness that have pushed some into fury and despair.
"I swear we are waiting for death. It will be better than living. We are waiting for death at each moment. It's a suspended death," says Abu Jihad, a middle-aged resident of Khan Younis in the south of the tiny, densely populated territory.
He was standing in a street close to a house flattened by an air strike, which had shaken the neighborhood awake in the middle of the night.
"We are not living. We need a solution. Either kill us all or let us live," he says, raging at Israel and at the wider world which he accused of being silent and impotent.
Israel's stated military objective is to destroy Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group whose fighters burst through Gaza's border fence leading to a rampage through nearby Israeli communities on Oct. 7, in which more than 1,400 people were killed, and 240 others were abducted, taken back to the enclave as hostages.
Israel's subsequent air, sea, and ground onslaught against Hamas has killed more than 10,000 people in the coastal strip, according to health authorities there. With thousands still missing under the rubble.
Israel has told residents of the northern part of the enclave, where its forces have encircled Gaza City, to move to the south for their own safety, but has been bombarding the south too, though less intensively than the north.
Row of Corpses
In Khan Younis and Rafah, two separate strikes on homes
killed 23 people overnight, health officials said on Tuesday.
At the site of the Khan Younis strike, a man carries the lifeless body of a tiny child, dressed in what looks like pink pajamas, from the flattened ruin of a home.
A young girl survived but is trapped by a slab of concrete that had fallen on her legs. A group of men use their bare hands to try and free her as an anxious crowd stands outside, calling out encouragements to the rescuers.
Ahmed Ayesh, a resident injured in the strike, walks out of the bomb site with a bloodied face and blood spattered over his T-shirt and one arm. He is visibly enraged as he speaks to reporters.
"This is the bravery of the so-called Israel. They show their might and power against civilians. Babies inside! Kids inside!" he says, jabbing his finger towards the ruin, his voice mounting.
Israel says it targets only militants and accuses Hamas of using human shields and concealing weapons and operations posts in built-up residential districts. Hamas denies this. With 2.3 million people living in an area of 365 square km, Gaza is one of the most densely populated places in the world.
At Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, a row of corpses wrapped in white shrouds has been placed on the ground outside the door. From the length of the bodies, it's clear that some of the dead are adults and some are children.
A woman in a red dress and beige head scarf breaks down into uncontrollable weeping, her body folding forwards as a man tries to comfort her. Another man crouches down and cries, his face reddened and contorted by anguish.
After a time, a group of men including medical staff in surgical scrubs and plastic aprons kneel down to pray alongside the bodies.
In Rafah, also in the south, another all-too-familiar scene unfolds as men and boys line up on a sandy expanse strewn with rubbish, where a single functioning hosepipe is the only source of water accessible to thousands of residents.
A lengthy line of yellow, black, green, and blue jerry cans have been placed in a tidy line as people settle in for hours of waiting to get a meagre ration.
"Each person comes with a 20-litre container and shares it with the rest of his family. Every person gets four or five liters. It's the same situation every day," says Bakr al-Kashef, a young man in line.
A month into Israel's devastating military assault on the
Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Palestinians stuck inside the besieged
enclave face daily suffering of a scale, intensity and
repetitiveness that have pushed some into fury and despair.
"I swear we are waiting for death. It will be better than
living. We are waiting for death at each moment. It's a
suspended death," says Abu Jihad, a middle-aged resident of Khan
Younis in the south of the tiny, densely populated...
