Gaza returns to the horror of bombings after the end of the truce: "I was sleeping and I woke up with an explosion"

In the already devastated Gaza Strip, its inhabitants woke up this Friday under fire from intense Israeli bombardments after the Islamist group Hamas and Israel ended their truce, rekindling a painful déjà vu of death and destruction in the Palestinian enclave.

The roar of the explosions that shook the Strip early on, seeding it from north to south with colossal gray mushrooms of smoke and dust, gave way to screams of horror. “Yuri, Yuri…. Don't go!” Fatena Meqdad cried inconsolably, when she discovered that her five-year-old daughter was dead, a week before her birthday.

The girl, whose name means “flower”, died in a neighborhood of Rafah, very close to the border with Egypt, when a projectile hit near where she was playing with her cousins.

“I was sleeping and suddenly I woke up with an explosion, I didn't realize what happened. His uncle went to see and came back shouting my daughter's name, he told me that she had been murdered and that my son was injured,” says Ramadan Meqdad, Yuri's father.

“She looked like a flower. The last two nights he came to sleep with me, and told me: 'I love you dad', I never thought he was saying goodbye to me,” he commented. Fatena was planning to bake his birthday cake in a few days, while Yuri's sister says not understanding why the Israeli Army is cruel against children.

At least 6,000 minors have died under bombs in this war. “Why do they kill children? We haven't done anything to them,” he cries. “This is the worst day of my life.” The Strip has recorded more than 15,000 deaths since the war began on October 7, in addition to some 7,000 people buried under the rubble.

The Strip has recorded more than 15,000 deaths since the war began on October 7, in addition to some 7,000 people buried under the rubble. This Friday alone, 178 more deaths were added to the list, as well as 589 injured, most of them children and women, indicated the Gaza Ministry of Health, controlled by Hamas.

In the streets of Rafah, several women hugged the corpses of their babies or children, some covered in dust and with their eyes still open, while the bodies of adults wrapped in white cloth were piled up. Many others desperately searched among the rubble for signs of life for their loved ones.

With no place to go

Thursday was the seventh and final day of a truce negotiated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, through an agreement that included the release of 105 hostages kidnapped by Hamas, in exchange for the release of 240 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons and the entry of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.

Israel and Hamas blamed each other for breaking the truce, and shortly before 7:00 a.m. local time (5:00 GMT), when the truce they did not renew expired, they began the exchange of fire despite increasing international opposition.

An Israeli government spokesman said that “Hamas will receive the mother of all blows,” while the Islamist group promised to respond “firmly.” The United States warned Israel against resuming the military offensive in Gaza unless it had a concrete plan to avoid mass deaths and displacement of Palestinian families, as occurred before the truce.

This Friday, Israel dropped thousands of leaflets from the air in the south of the Strip, urging the inhabitants of the city of Khan Younis, now considered a “dangerous combat zone”, to move towards Rafah, too. bombed today.

But according to Gazan authorities, thousands of refugees are in the Naser Hospital in Khan Younis, while Rafah “is today a city hit by disaster, since the medical aid that came in during the truce is only enough for one day.”

“My family and I are from northern Gaza, we evacuated to the south when Israel announced it would be safe. I wish we had not evacuated, maybe my daughter would be alive,” he laments in Rafah.

Humanitarian crisis

“Medical teams are caring for a large number of wounded after the end of the truce and new bombings against civilians. The injured are lying on the floor of the emergency services and in front of the operating rooms, due to the accumulation of cases,” denounced the Ministry of Health.

“The health situation in the north of the Strip is extremely catastrophic. The three remaining hospitals are small and are not prepared to receive a large number of wounded,” he added, urging Gazans to donate blood. Before the end of the truce, the panorama in the Strip was already apocalyptic.

The vast majority of the buildings in the northern half of the enclave were reduced to ashes, while nearly two million Gazans – almost the entire population – are displaced in the middle of winter, in the midst of a serious humanitarian crisis due to the collapse. of hospitals and the shortage of drinking water, food, medicine, electricity and fuel.