'We are abandoned' Fresh strikes hit desperate, weary population in Gaza

It took only seconds for the bombs to start falling on Gaza again. The weeklong ceasefire ended at 7am local time, and almost immediately the sound of explosions filled the corridors of al-Nasr hospital in the south of the territory.

- Emma Graham-Harrison

 

"This is the biggest still functioning hospital in Gaza. It's at 200%-plus capacity," said James Elder, a spokesperson for Unicef, describing the end of the truce from al-Nasr. "The health system is overwhelmed, it cannot take more children with the wounds of war." 

By evening, more than 100 people had been killed and the already crowded wards of Gaza's remaining hospitals were struggling with a new influx of patients, doctors and aid workers.

In the south, the fear and grief had a sharper edge, as Israel warned civilians to leave some areas it had originally declared safe zones, and stepped up bombing campaigns in the area.

"I woke up to intense and heavy bombardment of different areas across the Gaza Strip," said Maha Hussaini, a journalist and a EuroMed human rights monitor, who has been displaced from her Gaza City home, in a phone interview.

"This time the attacks seem to be closer to our areas of refuge, those same areas we were told to take refuge in."

Residents shared pictures of leaflets instructing residents in four Khan Younis neighbourhoods along the border with Israeli territory to flee further south. They knew what was coming, after seven weeks of intense bombardment and a ground invasion in the north that has killed more than 15,000 people, more than two-thirds of them women and children.