Ruin and desperation in Gaza as Israeli onslaught continues to rage

The Israeli military has hit Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis yet again, with relentless artillery shelling and air strikes on residential areas.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society headquarters was targeted for the third time in less than a week. Several people were killed and wounded.

A main supporter of Gaza’s healthcare system, the damage to the medical equipment inside will further the human suffering here and the miserable situation of hospitals.

To the south in the city of Rafah, to which hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Palestinians have fled, non-stop shelling continued into Wednesday morning. Meanwhile, Israeli bulldozers were on agricultural land creating a “buffer zone”, and squeezing people into an even smaller area of the Gaza Strip.

UN agencies have voiced alarm over the spiralling humanitarian crisis. Most of the enclave’s population of 2.4 million remains under siege and bombardment, displaced and huddled in shelters and tents, and short of food.

“Living conditions… are just hopeless,” said 43-year-old Mostafa Shennar, who fled Gaza City, now largely a devastated urban combat zone, and has been living in Rafah.

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and warned the war, raging since Hamas’s October 7 attack, may continue “throughout 2024”. Efforts towards a ceasefire have so far yielded no results.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA