Palestinians inspect the destruction following overnight Israeli strikes on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on May 6, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement.
| Photo Credit: AFP

As well as killing more than 34,000 people and causing catastrophic levels of hunger and injury, the seven-month war between Israel and Hamas has also caused massive material destruction in Gaza.

“The rate of damage being registered is unlike anything we have studied before. It is much faster and more extensive than anything we have mapped,” said Corey Scher, a Ph.D. candidate at the City University of New York, who has been researching satellite imagery of Gaza.

As Israel launches an offensive on Rafah, the last population centre in Gaza yet to be entered by its ground troops, AFP looks at the territory’s shattered landscape seven months into the war sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack.

Three-quarters of Gaza City destroyed

Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on the planet, where before the war 2.3 million people had been living on a 365-square-kilometre (140-square-mile) strip of land.

According to satellite analyses by Mr. Scher and Jamon Van Den Hoek, an associate professor of geography at Oregon State University, 56.9 % of Gaza buildings were damaged or destroyed as of April 21, making a total of 160,000.

“The fastest rates of destruction were in the first two to three months of the bombardment”, Mr. Scher told AFP.

In Gaza City, home to some 6,00,000 people before the war, the situation is dire: almost three-quarters (74.3%) of its buildings have been damaged or destroyed. 

Five hospitals now rubble

During the war, Gaza’s hospitals have been repeatedly attacked by Israel, which accuses Hamas of using them for military purposes, a charge the militant group denies.

In the first six weeks of the war sparked by the Hamas attack, which killed more than 1,170 people according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures, “60% of healthcare facilities… were indicated as damaged or destroyed”, Mr. Scher said.

The territory’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa in Gaza City, was targeted in two offensives by the Israeli army, the first in November, the second in March.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said the second operation reduced the hospital to an “empty shell” strewn with human remains. 

Five hospitals have been completely destroyed, according to figures compiled by AFP from the OpenStreetMap project, the Hamas health ministry and the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT). Fewer than one in three hospitals — 28% — are partially functioning, according to the UN.

Over 70% of schools damaged

The territory’s largely U.N.-run schools, where many civilians have sought refuge from the fighting, have also paid a heavy price.

As of April 25, UNICEF counted 408 schools damaged, representing at least 72.5% of its count of 563 facilities.

Of those, 53 school buildings have been completely destroyed and 274 others have been damaged by direct fire.

The U.N. estimates that two-thirds of the schools will need total or major reconstruction to be functional again.

Regarding places of worship, combined data from UNOSAT and OpenStreetMap show 61.5% of mosques have been damaged or destroyed. 

More bombed-out than Dresden

The level of destruction in northern Gaza has surpassed that of the German city of Dresden, which was firebombed by Allied forces in 1945 in one of the most controversial Allied acts of World War II.

According to a U.S. military study from 1954, quoted by the Financial Times, the bombing campaign at the end of World War II damaged 59% of Dresden’s buildings.

In late April, the head of the U.N. mine clearance programme in the Palestinian territories, Mungo Birch, said there was more rubble to clear in Gaza than in Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia more than two years ago. 

The U.N. estimated that as of the start of May, the post-war reconstruction of Gaza would cost between 30 billion and 40 billion dollars.

“War is bad for everyone. And we live in constant fear,” says Asiya, who lives in a village near the Israeli-Lebanon border. Hailing from Israel’s minority Druze community, Asiya hosts tourists and visiting delegations at her home in Yanuh-Jat for lunch. She offers traditional Druze food in a large house on a hill. From her balcony, the heights on the Lebanese-Israel border that have been on fire for six months are visible.

Read more on Israel-Palestine Conflict

“After the war began, business was down. We get practically no tourists these days,” said Asiya, a mother of three who lost her husband a few years ago.

Ever since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the latter’s subsequent invasion of the Gaza Strip, Israel’s northern border has seen a slow-burning war between the Israeli forces and Shia and Palestinian militias on the other side. Southern Lebanon is the stronghold of Hezbollah, the powerful, Iran-aligned Shia militia. Hamas’s Qassem Brigades and the Islamic Jihad’s al-Quds Brigades also have some limited presence in southern Lebanon. These groups have launched multiple rocket attacks into northern Israel since October 7 “in solidarity” with Palestinians and Israel has carried out hundreds of retaliatory strikes in Lebanon.

Yanuh-Jat, which was hit by rockets from Lebanon in April 2023, has relatively been quiet in the latest round of conflict. But Asiya is worried that if the tensions escalate on the border, her village and its over 6,000 residents, mostly Druze, would get caught in the war. Like most houses on Israel’s border, Asiya’s house also has a bunker. She says she has 15 seconds to take shelter in the bunker once the alarm goes off in the event of a rocket attack.

Between October 7 and March 15, Hezbollah, and other militias in Lebanon and Israel exchanged at least 4,733 attacks across the border, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a non-profit. Of these, Israel accounted for 83% of the attacks, totalling 3,952 incidents, while Hezbollah, Amal Movement and Palestinian militias launched 781 attacks.

Hezbollah, which fought a month-long war with Israel in 2006, has stated that it would continue attacking Israeli positions as long as the Gaza war continues. On Wednesday, Hezbollah launched a rocket and missile attack at a military facility in northern Israel, wounding at least 14 soldiers. The militant group said it attacked in retaliation against an Israeli air strike that killed Hezbollah members.

“We have been at war since October 7,” said Sarit Zehavi, the founder and president of Alma Research and Education Centre, a think tank focused on Israel’s security. Ms. Zehavi, a former Lieutenant Colonel in the Israeli Defence Forces, said Hezbollah is carrying out a well-calculated campaign from Southern Lebanon. “It’s not a full-scale war. But Hezbollah has managed to terrorise the whole Upper Galilee region.”

According to Alma’s research, Hezbollah has carried out over 1,000 attacks on Israel since October 7. Over 57% of these attacks have targeted military facilities, while 43% were aimed at civilians. Hezbollah and other militants have used anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns, drones and mortars in these attacks. And Israel’s repeated air strikes inside Lebanon targeting Hezbollah positions and commanders did little to deter or blunt Hezbollah’s fire power, according to Alma.

After the northern border turned into a war zone, Israel evacuated 43 communities (61,000 people) in the Upper Galilee region, located up to 5 km from the border. Most of them have taken temporary shelter in hotels in the Northern District. The displacement has added pressure on the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to calm the border region and allow the displaced to go back to their homes.

“Hezbollah has always set their eyes on Upper Galilee. Now they have managed to push Israelis out of the region. Hezbollah’s plan is to occupy Galilee,” Ms. Zehavi told The Hindu at her office in Upper Galilee. She said there has never been real peace on the northern border even after the 2006 war. “The war did not deter Hezbollah. They have been amassing strength all these years,” she said.

Despite speculations that Hezbollah would open a second front in the north, the Shia militia group has maintained its controlled warfare against Israel over the past six months. It triggered a cycle of retaliatory strikes. Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed at least 357 people, including senior Hezbollah commanders, since October 7, according to ACLED. On the Israeli side, 22 people lost their lives in attacks from Lebanon.

The situation became worse after Iran’s April 14 air attack on Israel. Now, when Israel is preparing its response to Iran, Hezbollah is upping the ante on the border.

“I can’t say how the situation is going to play out. Israel is not interested in a war with Hezbollah. Hezbollah wants to keep the status quo as it benefits them,” said Ms. Zehavi. “Israel wants to take the displaced back to their homes. But that’s not possible as long as cross-border firing continues. And Hezbollah says there won’t be a ceasefire unless there’s a ceasefire in Gaza. Even if there’s a ceasefire, it would only embolden Hezbollah. They could do what Hamas did on October 7 with much more ferocity,” she added.

The writer was in Israel as part of a media delegation.

“War is bad for everyone. And we live in constant fear,” says Asiya, who lives in a village near the Israeli-Lebanon border. Hailing from Israel’s minority Druze community, Asiya hosts tourists and visiting delegations at her home in Yanuh-Jat for lunch. She offers traditional Druze food in a large house on a hill. From her balcony, the heights on the Lebanese-Israel border that have been on fire for six months are visible.

Read more on Israel-Palestine Conflict

“After the war began, business was down. We get practically no tourists these days,” said Asiya, a mother of three who lost her husband a few years ago.

Ever since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the latter’s subsequent invasion of the Gaza Strip, Israel’s northern border has seen a slow-burning war between the Israeli forces and Shia and Palestinian militias on the other side. Southern Lebanon is the stronghold of Hezbollah, the powerful, Iran-aligned Shia militia. Hamas’s Qassem Brigades and the Islamic Jihad’s al-Quds Brigades also have some limited presence in southern Lebanon. These groups have launched multiple rocket attacks into northern Israel since October 7 “in solidarity” with Palestinians and Israel has carried out hundreds of retaliatory strikes in Lebanon.

Yanuh-Jat, which was hit by rockets from Lebanon in April 2023, has relatively been quiet in the latest round of conflict. But Asiya is worried that if the tensions escalate on the border, her village and its over 6,000 residents, mostly Druze, would get caught in the war. Like most houses on Israel’s border, Asiya’s house also has a bunker. She says she has 15 seconds to take shelter in the bunker once the alarm goes off in the event of a rocket attack.

Between October 7 and March 15, Hezbollah, and other militias in Lebanon and Israel exchanged at least 4,733 attacks across the border, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a non-profit. Of these, Israel accounted for 83% of the attacks, totalling 3,952 incidents, while Hezbollah, Amal Movement and Palestinian militias launched 781 attacks.

Hezbollah, which fought a month-long war with Israel in 2006, has stated that it would continue attacking Israeli positions as long as the Gaza war continues. On Wednesday, Hezbollah launched a rocket and missile attack at a military facility in northern Israel, wounding at least 14 soldiers. The militant group said it attacked in retaliation against an Israeli air strike that killed Hezbollah members.

“We have been at war since October 7,” said Sarit Zehavi, the founder and president of Alma Research and Education Centre, a think tank focused on Israel’s security. Ms. Zehavi, a former Lieutenant Colonel in the Israeli Defence Forces, said Hezbollah is carrying out a well-calculated campaign from Southern Lebanon. “It’s not a full-scale war. But Hezbollah has managed to terrorise the whole Upper Galilee region.”

According to Alma’s research, Hezbollah has carried out over 1,000 attacks on Israel since October 7. Over 57% of these attacks have targeted military facilities, while 43% were aimed at civilians. Hezbollah and other militants have used anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns, drones and mortars in these attacks. And Israel’s repeated air strikes inside Lebanon targeting Hezbollah positions and commanders did little to deter or blunt Hezbollah’s fire power, according to Alma.

After the northern border turned into a war zone, Israel evacuated 43 communities (61,000 people) in the Upper Galilee region, located up to 5 km from the border. Most of them have taken temporary shelter in hotels in the Northern District. The displacement has added pressure on the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to calm the border region and allow the displaced to go back to their homes.

“Hezbollah has always set their eyes on Upper Galilee. Now they have managed to push Israelis out of the region. Hezbollah’s plan is to occupy Galilee,” Ms. Zehavi told The Hindu at her office in Upper Galilee. She said there has never been real peace on the northern border even after the 2006 war. “The war did not deter Hezbollah. They have been amassing strength all these years,” she said.

Despite speculations that Hezbollah would open a second front in the north, the Shia militia group has maintained its controlled warfare against Israel over the past six months. It triggered a cycle of retaliatory strikes. Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed at least 357 people, including senior Hezbollah commanders, since October 7, according to ACLED. On the Israeli side, 22 people lost their lives in attacks from Lebanon.

The situation became worse after Iran’s April 14 air attack on Israel. Now, when Israel is preparing its response to Iran, Hezbollah is upping the ante on the border.

“I can’t say how the situation is going to play out. Israel is not interested in a war with Hezbollah. Hezbollah wants to keep the status quo as it benefits them,” said Ms. Zehavi. “Israel wants to take the displaced back to their homes. But that’s not possible as long as cross-border firing continues. And Hezbollah says there won’t be a ceasefire unless there’s a ceasefire in Gaza. Even if there’s a ceasefire, it would only embolden Hezbollah. They could do what Hamas did on October 7 with much more ferocity,” she added.

The writer was in Israel as part of a media delegation.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday, April 5, 2024, wrote to the leaders of Egypt and Qatar, calling on them to press Hamas for a hostage deal with Israel, according to a senior administration official, one day after Biden called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to redouble efforts to reach a cease-fire in the six-month-old war in Gaza.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private letters, said Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, will meet Monday with family members of some of the estimated 100 hostages who are believed to still be in Gaza.

The letters to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, come as Biden has deployed CIA Director William Burns to Cairo for talks this weekend about the hostage crisis.

David Barnea, the head of Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, and negotiators from Egypt and Qatar are expected to attend. The Hamas side of the talks is indirect, with proposals relayed through third parties to Hamas leaders sheltering in tunnels beneath Gaza.

White House officials say negotiating a pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas to facilitate the exchange of hostages held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel is the only way to put a temporary cease-fire into effect and boost the flow of badly humanitarian aid into the territory.

Biden, in his conversation with Netanyahu, “made clear that everything must be done to secure the release of hostages, including American citizens,” and discussed “the importance of fully empowering Israeli negotiators to reach a deal,” according to the official. The first phase of the proposed deal would secure the release of women and elderly, sick and wounded hostages.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said earlier Friday that Biden underscored the need to get a hostage deal done during the Thursday conversation with Netanyahu that largely focused on Israeli airstrikes that killed seven aid workers with World Central Kitchen.

“We are coming up on six months — six months that these people have been held hostage. And what we have to consider is just the abhorrent conditions” the hostages are being held in, Kirby said. “They need to be home with their families.”

Biden had expressed optimism for a temporary cease-fire and a hostage deal during the runup to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, but an agreement never materialized.

The White House said in a statement Thursday following Biden’s call with Netanyahu that the U.S. president said reaching an “immediate cease-fire” in exchange for hostages was “essential” and urged Israel to reach such an accord “without delay.”

White House officials acknowledge that Biden has become increasingly frustrated with Israel’s prosecution of a grinding war that has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians.

The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 people hostage.

The Israeli military campaign in Gaza, experts say, is among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history. Within two months, researchers say, the offensive already has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. It has killed more civilians than the U.S.-led coalition did in its three-year campaign against the Islamic State group.

The White House has maintained its support for Israel amid growing domestic and international wariness with Israel’s prosecution of the war, and repeatedly said that a temporary cease-fire could have already come had Hamas agreed to release the sick, the wounded, the elderly, and young women.

But the pressure on Biden has only mounted since this week’s airstrikes that killed the World Central Kitchen workers.

The Israeli government acknowledged “mistakes” and announced some disciplinary measures against officers involved in ordering the strikes. Israel also approved a series of steps aimed at increasing the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, including the reopening of a key crossing that was destroyed in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday that the World Central Kitchen incident is part of a broader problem with how the Israeli military is carrying out the war. Nearly 200 humanitarian aid workers have killed since start of the conflict.

“But the essential problem is not who made the mistakes, it is the military strategy and procedures in place that allow for those mistakes to multiply time and time again,” he said. “Fixing those failures requires independent investigations and meaningful and measurable change on the ground.”

United Nations Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, center, addresses a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on the war in Gaza, on U.N. headquarters. File photo
| Photo Credit: AP

The United States, which has repeatedly blocked calls for a truce in Gaza, will submit a draft resolution to the UN Security Council Friday on the need for “an immediate ceasefire,” while Russia pushes for even more explicit demands for peace.

Since the start of the Israeli-Hamas war on October 7, the United States has repeatedly used its UN Security Council veto to block the world body from calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Palestinian territory.

Following their last veto at the end of February, US officials have been negotiating an alternative text focusing on support for diplomatic efforts on the ground for a six-week truce in exchange for the release of hostages.

The latest version, seen by AFP, notes the necessity for “an immediate and sustained ceasefire to protect civilians on all sides, allow for the delivery of essential humanitarian assistance, and alleviate humanitarian suffering.”

It thereby supports “diplomatic efforts to secure such a ceasefire in connection with the release of all remaining hostages.”

With the United States under strong international pressure to soften its support for key ally Israel, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that the latest resolution sends “a strong signal.”

The resolution “does call for an immediate ceasefire tied to the release of hostages, and we hope very much that countries will support that,” Blinken said in Saudi Arabia.

However, the text does not explicitly use the word “call,” instead simply stating that a ceasefire is imperative, which Russia says is too weak.

“We are not satisfied with anything which doesn’t call for an immediate ceasefire,” Russian Deputy Ambassador to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy told reporters Thursday.

Richard Gowan, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, said “the US is still not demanding a ceasefire without preconditions.”

But “even this limited shift by the US will worry the Israelis, because (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu wants to keep the UN out of diplomacy over the war altogether.”

According to diplomatic sources, the United States now has enough votes (at least 9 out of 15) for the text to be adopted, but there remains the possibility of a veto by Russia.

US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield has said that she was “optimistic” for its adoption.

Condemnation of Hamas

In addition to the ceasefire, the text also “rejects any attempt at demographic or territorial change in Gaza” and also condemns “all acts of terrorism, including the Hamas-led attacks of October 7” against Israel.

If adopted, the resolution would mark the first time the Security Council has specifically condemned the Hamas attack, which resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel has relentlessly pounded Gaza, where at least 31,988 people, most of them women and children, have been killed, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory says.

Two humanitarian resolutions that have been adopted by the Council, as well as those in the General Assembly, have not mentioned Hamas, an absence lambasted by Israel.

Several non-permanent Security Council members have circulated their own draft project in recent days which “demands an immediate humanitarian ceasefire for the month of Ramadan” and the immediate release of all hostages, according to a text seen by AFP.

If the US text is rejected, then this draft “will come to the table and put to the vote and I hope it will be adopted,” said France’s UN Ambassador Nicolas de Riviere, adding that now was the “time to save lives.”

However, a vote on that text would have an equally uncertain outcome.

The Council has been largely divided on the Israeli-Palestinian issue for years and has only managed to adopt the two essentially humanitarian resolutions on the topic since October 7.

But even those had little effect: the entry of aid into Gaza remains largely insufficient and famine looms.

Several political resolutions have been rejected by US vetoes on the one hand or Russian and Chinese vetoes on the other — or by an insufficient number of votes overall.

Smoke billows following Israeli bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on February 25, 2024, during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas militant group.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen clashed throughout the Gaza Strip over the weekend, as mediators picked up the pace of talks on a possible ceasefire to free hostages held by Hamas and bring a measure of Ramadan respite to the battered enclave.

Prospects for securing any truce looked uncertain, however, with Israel saying it was, in parallel, planning to expand its sweep to destroy Hamas, while the Islamist faction stood firm on its demand for a permanent end to the nearly five-month-old war.

Residents said Israeli forces shelled several areas of the enclave as tanks rolled into Beit Lahiya and soldiers and gunmen waged running battles in the Zeitoun sector of Gaza City — both in the north, which had been conquered early in the offensive.

At least 86 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes since Saturday, medics said on Sunday. Israel’s military said two soldiers died in fighting in south Gaza and that its forces killed or captured Palestinian gunmen in Zeitoun and elsewhere.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his war Cabinet for a briefing late on Saturday by intelligence chiefs who returned from a meeting with Qatari, Egyptian and U.S. mediators in Paris about a possible second Gaza ceasefire.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN’s “State of the Union” that negotiators for the United States, Egypt, Qatar and Israel “came to an understanding” on the basic contours of a hostage deal during talks in Paris.

The deal is still under negotiation, said Mr. Sullivan, who added there will have to be indirect discussions by Qatar and Egypt with Hamas.

Mr. Netanyahu told CBS’ “Face the Nation” it was not clear yet whether a hostage deal would materialise from the talks, declining to discuss specifics but saying Hamas needed to make more reasonable demands.

“They are in another planet. But if they come down to a reasonable situation, then yes we’ll have a hostage deal. I hope so,” he said.

Doha talks this week

Egyptian security sources said there would be more talks this week in Doha, with mediators shuttling between Hamas and Israeli delegates, and a follow-up round in Cairo. There was no immediate confirmation of that from Israel, Hamas or Qatar.

The first pause in fighting, in November, saw the release of around half of the 253 people Hamas seized during an Oct. 7 cross-border killing spree that sparked the war. In that deal, Israel freed three times the number of Palestinians from its security prisons and admitted more humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Israeli media, citing unnamed officials, reported there was a framework for the return of around a third of the 130 remaining hostages over a six-week truce covering the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. There was no formal confirmation from either side.

Palestinian officials said Hamas was insisting on Israel calling off the offensive and withdrawing forces under any deal. Israel signalled intent to move into one of the last towns where Hamas, which is sworn to its destruction, has intact forces.

“We are working to achieve another framework for the release of our abductees, as well as the completion of the elimination of the Hamas battalions in Rafah,” Netanyahu said on Facebook, referring to the town in the far south of Gaza near the border with Egypt.

This week, he added, the Israeli security cabinet would approve military plans for Rafah – including the evacuation of more than a million displaced Palestinian civilians who have been sheltering there, and whose fate worries world powers.

Almost 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, Gaza medical officials say. The Hamas raid of Oct. 7 killed 1,200 people in Israel, which has also lost 241 soldiers in Gaza ground fighting that followed, according to official tallies.

Palestinians inspect the damage of destroyed buildings following Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City, October 27, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

The United Nations said Friday it was concerned that war crimes were being committed on both sides in the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

The U.N. human rights office cited forcible transfer, collective punishment and the taking of hostages as the war continued into its 21st day.

“We are concerned that war crimes are being committed. We are concerned about the collective punishment of Gazans in response to the atrocious attacks by Hamas, which also amounted to war crimes,” spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told a press conference in Geneva.

Follow live updates from the Israel-Hamas war

She said that it was for an independent court of law to qualify whether war crimes had been committed.

Israel has heavily bombarded Gaza since Hamas gunmen stormed across the border on October 7, killing 1,400 people, mostly civilians, kidnapping more than 220 others, according to Israeli officials.

The Health Ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said the strikes have killed more than 7,000 people, mainly civilians and many of them children, leading to growing calls for protection of innocents caught up in the conflict.

Israel has cut supplies of food, water and power to Gaza, notably blocking all deliveries of fuel saying it would be exploited by Hamas to manufacture weapons and explosives.

Israel’s army called on people in the north of the Gaza Strip — nearly half of its 2.4-million population — to head south ahead of an expected ground offensive.

“Nowhere is safe in Gaza. Compelling people to evacuate in these circumstances… and while under a complete siege raises serious concerns over forcible transfer, which is a war crime,” Shamdasani said.

“Israel’s use of explosive weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated areas has caused extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and loss of civilian lives that, by all appearances, is difficult to reconcile with international humanitarian law,” she added.

Shamdasani said a humanitarian catastrophe was unfolding for the people “locked inside Gaza who are being collectively punished. Collective punishment is a war crime. Israel’s collective punishment of the entire population of Gaza must immediately cease.”

She said indiscriminate attacks by Palestinian armed groups, including through the launching of unguided rockets into Israel, had to stop.

“They must immediately and unconditionally release all civilians who are captured and are still being held. The taking of hostages is also a war crime,” the spokeswoman added.

A war crime is a serious violation of international law against civilians and combatants during armed conflict, a “grave breach” of the 1949 Geneva Conventions that established a legal framework for war after the Nuremberg tribunals of top Nazis.

The bodies of people killed during an Israeli airstrike are loaded onto a truck outside al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza Strip, on October 15, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

More than one million people have been forced from their homes in the northern Gaza Strip since Israel began its bombardment against Hamas, the UN said on Sunday, warning of dire conditions on the ground.

Israel declared war on the Islamist group last Sunday, a day after waves of its fighters broke through the heavily fortified border and shot, stabbed and burned to death more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians.

The relentless bombing since against those who masterminded the attack have flattened neighbourhoods and left at least 2,670 people dead in the Gaza Strip, the majority ordinary Palestinians.

But as Israel seeks to avenge the worst attack in its history, the Arab League and African Union warned the invasion could lead to “a genocide of unprecedented proportions”.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Hamas to release all hostages and for Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, warning that the region was “on the verge of the abyss”.

Also read | Israel’s evacuation order for Gaza ‘tantamount to death sentence’ for patients: WHO

Israel also faced a grave warning about the wider security implications of putting boots on the ground in the densely populated enclave.

“No one can guarantee the control of the situation and the non-expansion of the conflicts” if Israel sends its soldiers into Gaza, said Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.

“Those who are interested in preventing the scope of war and crisis from expanding need to prevent the current barbaric attacks… against citizens and civilians in Gaza,” he added.

Iran is Israel’s number one enemy and as well as funding Hamas also backs Hezbollah in Lebanon to the north, where cross-border fire has intensified in the last week, prompting Israel to shut the area to civilians.

Follow Israel-Hamas war, day 9 LIVE updates here

Escalation risk

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel had “no interest in a war in the north, we don’t want to escalate the situation.

“If Hezbollah chooses the path of war, it will pay a heavy price… but if it restrains itself, we’ll respect the situation,” he added.

The United States, which has given unequivocal backing to Israel, is concerned about violence spreading, and has sent two aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean as a deterrent.

In Washington, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said they feared the prospect of Iran becoming “directly engaged”, after it praised the Hamas attack but insisted it was not involved.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has in recent days toured Middle Eastern capitals in a frantic round of diplomacy to try to avert a wider crisis in the volatile region.

On Sunday, he pointed to “determination in every country I went to make sure that this doesn’t spread,” as he left Egypt.

Mr. Blinken has appealed to China to use its influence in the region to ease tensions.

But on Sunday Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Israel’s response had “gone beyond the scope of self-defence”.

He called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his emergency government to “cease its collective punishment of the people of Gaza”.

Aid agencies’ alarm

Israel has massed thousands of troops and heavy weaponry in the desert south of the country, waiting for the green light to go into northern Gaza.

The army has told 1.1 million Palestinians in the north of the Gaza Strip — nearly half of its 2.4-million population — to head south to safety.

But there were still Israeli air strikes in the south, including in Rafah, where one resident said a doctor’s house was targeted.

“All the family was wiped out,” said Khamis Abu Hilal.

Israeli military spokesmen Lieutenant Richard Hecht and Daniel Hagari said any ground offensive would be triggered by a “political decision”.

Mr. Hecht singled out Yahya Sinwar, the chief of Hamas in Gaza blamed for the October 7 attacks, calling him “a dead man walking”.

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Sunday urged Hamas to release all civilian hostages, and also expressed concern at the price Palestinians civilians and children were paying in the Israeli attacks on Gaza.

Foreign governments and aid agencies, including the UN and ICRC, have repeatedly criticised Israel’s call for Gazans to leave their homes.

The UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees said Sunday that some one million Palestinians had already been displaced in the first week of the conflict — but the number was likely to be higher.

UNRWA commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini said Gaza was facing an “unprecedented human catastrophe” because of the blockade and bombings.

“Raise the alarm that as of today, my UNRWA colleagues in Gaza are no longer able to provide humanitarian assistance as I speak,” he told reporters.

New Delhi:

As gun battles raged between Israeli security forces and hundreds of Hamas group fighters in at least 22 locations, Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant today issued a threat to “change the face of reality” in Gaza. 

Over 200 Israelis and 232 Palestinians were killed on Saturday in the deadliest escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in decades, after the Hamas group launched a massive rocket barrage and ground, air, and sea offensive, prompting Israel to respond with intense airstrikes.

“Today, we have seen the face of evil. Hamas launched a criminal attack, without distinguishing between women, children and the elderly. It will realise very quickly that it made a grave mistake. We will change the face of reality in the Gaza Strip,” Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said in a video statement.

היום, ראינו את פני הרוע.

החמאס פתח בהתקפה נפשעת, ללא הבחנה בין נשים, ילדים וקשישים. הוא יבין מהר מאוד שעשה טעות חמורה.

אנחנו נשנה את פני המציאות ברצועת עזה עשרות שנים קדימה.

אזרחי ישראל, במיוחד בשעות קשות אלו, התאזרו בסבלנות וגבו את כוחות הביטחון. pic.twitter.com/psu4BOJg3w

— יואב גלנט – Yoav Gallant (@yoavgallant) October 7, 2023

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to demolish Hamas strongholds in Gaza, reducing them to rubble, as the conflict continued to escalate.

READ |Explained: Israel-Palestine And A History Of Conflict

Rockets pounded Israel from Gaza from 6:30 am on Saturday, following months of growing violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with the highest death count in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict, in years.

“Israel is now at war,” Prime Minister Netanyahu declared to the shocked nation Saturday morning, in what was the 50th anniversary of the start of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.

“I’m telling the people of Gaza: get out of there now, because we’re about to act everywhere with all our force,” he added. “We’ll strike them to the bitter end and avenge with force this black day they brought on Israel and its people.”

US President Joe Biden reaffirmed his “unwavering” support for the US ally, Israel, as the UN Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting for Sunday. He also warned against any adversaries of Israel exploiting the situation.

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