In response, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration has launched its most searing assault on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip in years, announcing a full-scale siege of the already-blockaded territory, and signaling that it is preparing a ground invasion. Israeli commanders said the strikes were aimed at decimating Hamas military capabilities and taking out senior leaders.
But the civilian toll is extensive, bloody, and rapidly increasing. Gaza is home to more than 2 million people, packed into a space less than half the size of New York City, with no safe passage as the bombs rain down. The Gaza Health Ministry said Wednesday that more than 5,000 people had been injured during the four-day bombing campaign, and that 60 percent of the casualties were women and children.
According to health officials and medics, the diesel supplies that hospital generators depend on are running out, while the enclave’s sole power plant shut down on Wednesday afternoon after running out of fuel.
Doctors said that their facilities were already so overwhelmed that they were prioritizing only the worst shrapnel, crush and burn injuries for surgery. The grounds of al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest trauma treatment center, was packed with families who had left their homes in search of safety.
Ghassan Abu-Sitta, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon working at the facility, said that his team operated on a young girl Wednesday morning whose shrapnel wounds were so severe that her nose had been ripped off and her eyes were severely damaged. “Her mother was a doctor at al-Shifa Hospital, our staff doing the operation knew her well and now they were operating on her children.”
In between surgeries, he described how the faces of the staff were creased with worry, checking their cellphones for news of loved ones, as the airstrikes continued outside. With the communications network patchy, their messages often failed to go through.
“Unless there is a humanitarian corridor that allows supplies in too, the health system is going to collapse,” Abu-Sitta said.
More than 263,000 people have been displaced in Gaza since the fighting began. Israel has warned civilians to leave, but there is no exit. The border crossing into Israel is closed, as is the gate to Egypt, after it was damaged by an Israeli airstrike.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday that the United States was working with Egypt and Israel to facilitate Palestinian civilians leaving Gaza.
Israel said Tuesday that killing senior Hamas officials had become a top priority and there were a string of attacks targeting them overnight. Hamas said that the family house of Mohammad Deif, leader of the organization’s military wing, was hit, killing his brother.
Deif’s own house, which was empty, was also targeted, Hamas’s representative in Lebanon, Ahmed Abdulhadi, told The Washington Post. The whereabouts of Deif, who made the first announcement of Saturday’s assault on Israel, are unknown.
The Israeli military said earlier that its aircraft also struck and killed a member of the Hamas political bureau, Zakaria Abu Maamar. The militant group confirmed his death, as well as that of another member of its political office.
Fighter jets also hit the Islamic University, which the IDF said had been used as “a Hamas training camp for military intelligence operatives, as well as for the development and production of weapons.” It was not immediately possible to verify that claim.
Militants in Gaza have fired their own barrages of rockets into Israel throughout, wounding scores of people.
The fate of more than 100 hostages taken by Hamas militants to Gaza during Saturday’s assault has consumed the Israeli public even as they have been burying their dead. On Wednesday, Pope Francis called for the immediate release of the hostages.
“I’m praying for those families who saw a day of feast transformed into a day of grief; I’m calling for hostages to be released right away,” Francis said. The pope also insisted on diplomacy being key to address the situation, as terrorism and extremism “won’t help reach a solution to the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, while feeding hate, violence, revenge, and hurting both.”
The Israeli military has summoned 360,000 reservists to fight in the war with Hamas — the largest mobilization since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when 400,000 reservists were called up. Nearly 4 percent of the country’s population of 9.8 million, have left their regular jobs and their families to join the fight. Israelis who were abroad were also scrambling to secure transportation back to Israel as many airlines suspended flights.
The burgeoning crisis has also sparked fears of a wider conflict, as hostilities erupted along usually quiet regional fronts where even more heavily armed adversaries face off. On Wednesday, Hezbollah and Israel, already notionally at war, exchanged fire along the Israel-Lebanon border.
The IDF said that antitank missiles had been launched at its soldiers, and that it was responding with strikes into Lebanese territory. Hezbollah then announced it launched rockets in response to the killing of three members by earlier Israeli shelling.
Loveluck reported from London and Dadouch from Beirut. Noga Tarnopolsky in Jerusalem, Ellen Francis in London and Stefano Pitrelli in Rome contributed to this report.
