Last Tuesday evening, at about 6.30pm everything was calm in Abasan al-Kabira, on the south-eastern outskirts of Khan Younis in Gaza. For once the buzzing of the drones had died away, and there had been no sound of explosions for hours.
Like many other children, Rita Abu Hammad, a bright and playful eight-year-old, was standing in front of the school that had been her family’s home for weeks, watching the other children’s games, the traders at their ramshackle stalls, the adults talking, the teenagers trying to get an internet connection or lining up to pay a few shekels to charge phones at a small electricity supply point. In a tent nearby were her three brothers, sister and their mother, Rima Abu Hammad.
“Suddenly, we heard sound of a missile, and then a very strong explosion,” said Abu Hammad, 36. “Then the sound of screaming, ashes, and blood were the only thing you could hear, see and smell. When I pulled myself together, I remembered that my daughter had been standing near the school’s gate. I ran madly, and screaming her name.”
Abu Hammad started looking for her daughter, stepping between the injured, the dead and the scattered body parts, but could not find her.
“There were many bodies, including children, women, and men, some cut to many pieces, some burnt alive. The street was a pool of blood. But there was no trace of my child.”
The airstrike in Abasan , which the Israeli military said involved a “precise munition” to target a “terrorist from Hamas’ military wing” who had taken part in the 7 October attack on Israel, was only one incident during one of the most violent weeks in Gaza since the first months of heavy fighting in the territory last year.
On Saturday, an Israeli airstrike killed at least 90 Palestinians in a designated humanitarian zone in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry. Israel said the attack targeted the Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif.
More than 38,500 people have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli invasion began nine months ago. The invasion followed Hamas’s surprise attacks in Israel, during which 1,200 people were killed and 250 others abducted.
The surge in violence came amid a further round of ceasefire talks that were paused by Hamas after Saturday’s strike. Israel accuses Hamas of using Gaza’s population as a human shield, a charge the Islamist militant group denies.
UN and other humanitarian officials over the weekend described rapidly deteriorating conditions as temperatures touched 40C, with shortages of vital supplies, limited water and growing anarchy.
“Any kind of high-value item we try to bring in through … is immediately looted. This isn’t desperate people. This is just criminality. There is no police on the streets because they get targeted by Israel,” one senior UN official said. “Thirty trucks came in with flour without a problem but when eight trucks of tents came in four were immediately looted. That’s 900 tents gone, and each can be sold for $400 [£315] or so on the market.”
Another official described a “daily vision of horror”, with limited stocks of medicine, barely adequate supplies of food and “nowhere near enough water”.
“Hospitals keep reopening with fewer doctors, less machines, less medicines each time. They are run by an army of burned out heroes,” they added.
Dr Mohamed Saqr, the head of nursing at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, said the situation there was “catastrophic”. Even before the surge of violence this week, the hospital was full.
“We are the only operating major hospital in southern Gaza serving more than 1.2 million residents and displaced people in Khan Younis. There were no single empty beds, even in the emergency department,” Saqr said.
When the school was hit in Abasan, Nasser hospital received 23 dead and 56 injured in less than half an hour.
“The situation was very difficult. We did not have sufficient tools or equipment, not even sterilisers or even gauze to wrap wounds, even gowns for operations. We treated the injured on the floor of the reception area or in corridors,” Saqr said.
Abu Hammad and her relatives searched for an hour around the site of the school bombing in Abasan but when there was still no sign of her daughter went to the hospital, where they split up.
“I said to my brother, I will go to the emergency department, and you will go to the mortuary and look for her. After a long search, I found her, she was alive but badly injured with shrapnel in the back and chest,” she said.
“I felt very happy and sad at the same time. I was happy because I did not lose her, she was still alive with me, and I felt sad for her condition and pain, but I still thank God for her presence and that she was not among the children who died there. It is true that the war is nine months old, and every day has been difficult, but I did not have a harder day than that day.”
Much of the recent fighting in the Palestinian territory has been in the Gaza City district of Shujaiya, a former Hamas stronghold cleared by Israeli forces early in the war. Tens of thousands have fled but not Mohammed Abu Ahmed, a 48-year-old father of five.
“The situation was very difficult with the bombing and shelling continuing night and day. In the last three days, leaflets were thrown and recorded calls were made to people by [the Israelis] ordering them to move and head south, but the vast majority of people refuse to leave,” he said.
“I will not leave because we have already been through a lot, and because my wife and five children are here and it’s very hard to get transport. Also, my mother is disabled and needs special so it will be difficult move her and for her to live in a tent.”
A final reason for not leaving cited by many others: nowhere is considered safe after a series of strikes in the humanitarian safe zone.
“I ask the world to move to stop the war and make us live freely and peacefully like the rest of the peoples of the world,” Abu Ahmed said.
Among those who did flee Shukaiya was Fathi Al-Samri, 21, who moved to Nuseirat in central Gaza to live with a sister, while the rest of the family of seven stayed put.
“My mother insisted that I go south because I am her only son. The rest of the family refused to leave to preserve our property because they fear that they will not be allowed to ever go back again,” he said.
Khaled Abu Anza, 23, was sitting at the Abasan school gate next to his wifi stall when the airstrike hit on Tuesday.
“We were going to go and play football but we decided to stay. There was an explosion and when I looked around, I found all my friends and people around me, cut into pieces, and killed. I wanted to help people but when I looked at myself, I found that I had shrapnel in my chest, back and feet, and I was bleeding,” he said.
“After about 20 minutes, a truck came and they carried me with it, and it was full of corpses … And I was the only living person in the truck … This is enough, we have no energy left. We are tired. We don’t want anything, just to stop the war.”
