Israel-Gaza war: Hundreds feared dead as Israel levels residential buildings in north and south of Gaza
Gaza City, Gaza - Israel has reportedly killed hundreds of people in Gaza over the past 24 hours, with its bombing campaign reaching a new level of brutality since a truce with Hamas expired on Friday.
In a horrific escalation of a war that has already claimed well over 15,000 lives in the Palestinian enclave, both southern and northern Gaza were targeted with devastating airstrikes.
As of Sunday morning, the Gaza Government Media Office said over 700 people had been killed in little over 24 hours.
While these numbers cannot be independently confirmed, entire neighborhoods were flattened on Saturday and Sunday, with residential buildings struck in Khan Younis in the south and the beleaguered Jabalia refugee camp in the north.
Al-Jazeera reporters said "the scale of destruction is beyond description" in Jabalia, which has been hit multiple times since Israel began its assault in response to the October 7 Hamas attack that killed some 1,200 people and led to the taking of more than 250 hostages.
A week-long ceasefire in which 110 Hamas captives were freed in exchange for the release of 240 Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons ended on Friday.
Israel's "grid system" tells civilians to flee from neighborhood to neighborhood
Palestinians described the renewed assaults as some of the first since the start of hostilities.
A "grid map" introduced by Israel on Saturday has also contributed to the feeling of absolute terror in Gaza, as civilians are repeatedly told to evacuate from one of the over 600 areas to another ahead of Israeli sorties. The map is meant to be accessed through a QR code, but that is impossible for many in the context of a severely disrupted telecommunications environment.
Some three quarters of the strip's entire population – over 1.8 million people – has been displaced, with a territory that was already among the most densely packed in the world reaching new heights of overcrowding after hundreds of thousands have fled south, at Israel's urging.
However, the south is now precisely where Israeli military attention has turned to, meaning that nowhere in Gaza is safe.
Cover photo: REUTERS