2023-10-28 13:18:00
Hundreds of buildings were destroyed according to emergency services in Israeli bombardments overnight in the Gaza Strip where witnesses spoke of scenes reminiscent of an earthquake.
“Hundreds of buildings and houses have been completely destroyed and thousands of other homes have been damaged,” Mahmoud Bassal, the spokesperson for Civil Defense in Gaza, a Palestinian territory under Israeli control, told AFP. Islamist movement Hamas.
The intense bombardments of the night “changed the landscape of Gaza and the northern governorates”, he added.
According to several testimonies that AFP was able to collect, the most violent Israeli bombings of the night were concentrated on areas around two hospitals, al-Shifa in Gaza City and the so-called “Indonesian” hospital because it was built thanks to to donations from Indonesia, in the Jabaliya sector further north.
The raids destroyed many buildings and left huge craters in completely smashed streets.
In the Chati refugee camp, within the limits of Gaza City, Israeli bombings caused significant damage, according to several witnesses.
“What happened in Chati is worse than an earthquake,” one of its residents, Alaa Mahdi, 54, told AFP.
“It was bombing everywhere, the navy, the artillery and the planes. Who are they hitting, the resistance? No, the poor people,” he adds.
According to him, the blackout in the Gaza Strip, where communication and internet have been cut since Friday evening, was imposed “so that they commit a massacre without anyone hearing about it.”
“Very bad situation”
The human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) has warned that the telecommunications blackout in the Gaza Strip risks “serving as a cover for mass atrocities”.
Taxi driver Jamal Abou Shaqfa, 50, leaves the Chati camp with a family on board who wants to flee to the south.
“We are heading towards Khan Younes because the indiscriminate bombings in Chati have spared no women, children or old people. The situation is very bad,” he said.
In a street in the camp, dozens of residents search through the rubble of a residential tower, Bourj al-Ghoul, razed in the bombings as well as the houses around it.
Lying on his stomach on the rubble to make himself better heard, one of them, Abdelmajid Abou Hassira, calls out to possible survivors buried in the ruins: “Is there anyone underneath? ?We are here to save you.”
A few hours before the start of the massive bombings on Friday evening, the Israeli army accused Hamas of “waging war from hospitals” in the Gaza Strip and using its population as a “human shield”, which the movement Islamist categorically denied.
Kamal Abou Fattoum, 47, who fled Gaza City last week towards the south returned there on Saturday morning to discover that his house “was damaged” in the night’s raids.
“I then went to Chati camp to check on my sister who lives there and I saw destruction worse than that caused by the earthquake in Turkey,” he said, referring to the devastating earthquake that caused more 50,000 deaths in southeastern Turkey in February.
“People are under the rubble. Some are dead, others are still alive,” he adds.
The war was triggered on October 7 by Hamas attacks on Israeli soil, unprecedented in their scale and violence, which killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, according to Israel. According to the Israeli army, 229 people are being held hostage after being forcibly taken to the Gaza Strip, where Hamas has been in power since 2007.
The Hamas Ministry of Health, for its part, announced that the bombings launched in retaliation killed more than 7,703 people, the vast majority civilians, including more than 3,000 children.
10/28/2023 1:16:40 p.m. – Gaza Strip (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
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