Israel’s mass killing campaign in Gaza is escalating
Relatives stand over the bodies of children from the al-Farra family, killed in an Israeli attack in Khan Younis, 25 October 2024
Tareq S. Hajjaj reports in Mondoweiss on 1 November 2024:
Dismembered bodies are wrapped in spare pieces of cloth or plastic bags due to a shortage of funeral shrouds. Children bleed and are carried by their relatives in the streets without knowing where to go. Dead bodies are transported on animal-drawn carts due to the lack of ambulances or Civil Defense crews. Dozens of victims are trapped under the rubble with no one to reach them, and dead people and their body parts are strewn across the streets. Hospitals and residential neighborhoods are emptied en masse, as some of them are forced to flee south, others are arrested and taken to an unknown location, and others are executed in the field, according to eyewitness reports.
During the last ten days of October, the Israeli army disrupted all humanitarian services in the northern Gaza Strip, starting with an effort to empty all of the hospitals in the area. Kamal Adwan and al-Awda Hospitals were emptied of their patients and medical staff, alongside the hundreds of displaced civilians sheltering in their courtyards. Kamal Adwan Hospital now has only one doctor left and about 120 patients in need of treatment. The army also bombed ambulances and Civil Defense vehicles, including the only working fire engine left in north Gaza.
“The Civil Defense is forcibly disabled in all areas of the northern Gaza Strip due to the ongoing Israeli targeting campaign. Thousands of citizens are without humanitarian and medical care,” the Civil Defense said in a statement on Telegram.
The Israeli army has killed 639 Palestinians while injuring over 2,000 people between October 22 and October 31, the Gaza Ministry of Health reports. This number only includes those whose bodies were retrieved by civilians or rescue teams.