Israel has pounded Gaza with retaliatory air strikes for four days, killing hundreds, and with nowhere for survivors to go.
Sa’ed Darabeh was on his way to the hospital when an air strike ripped through his neighbourhood, destroying a building and a market.
Israel announced a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip on Monday, two days after an unprecedented assault by Hamas militants, who killed more than 1000 people, many of them civilians. “People are looking for that blue flag – for them, the blue of the U.N. is a sign of safety, and they’re taking their families there,” Tamara al-Rifai, UNRWA’s director of external relations and communications, told Al Jazeera.Although UN buildings are protected from attacks by international law, at least 14 UNRWA buildings have sustained damage, including a school, she said.
But Israel has closed the Erez Crossing, Gaza’s lone pedestrian pathway into the country. Rafah – the only functioning crossing with Egypt and the only way out for Gazans – has been hit repeatedly by the Israeli military, including again on Tuesday, forcing its closure. The Israel Defence Forces said they have hit more than 1300 targets across Gaza since the start of the aerial campaign, including weapons storage facilities and command and control centres belonging to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Video of the strikes released by the IDF show buildings exploding so quickly that, from above, they look almost like twinkling lights. The targets erupt in fireballs, collapsing and swallowing nearby structures.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk described the situation on Tuesday as a “powder keg”, urging states with influence to step in and help defuse it.
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