Reuters :
Tens of thousands of newly displaced Gazans huddled under tarpaulins on Friday in the centre of the enclave after fleeing the latest offensive by Israeli tanks, while warplanes targeted the south, flattening homes and burying families as they slept.
Israel is closing the year with new assaults in central and southern Gaza, unleashing a fresh exodus of people already driven from other areas, in what Defence Minister Yoav Gallant called an essential stage of its mission to destroy Hamas.
In the south of the strip in Rafah, Reuters journalists at the scene of one air strike that obliterated a building saw the head of a buried toddler sticking out of the rubble. The child screamed as a rescue worker shielded his head with a hand, while another swung a sledgehammer at a chisel, trying to break up a slab of concrete to free him.
Neighbour Sanad Abu Tabet said the two-story house had been crowded with displaced people. After morning broke, relatives came to collect the dead wrapped up in white shrouds. A man partly unwrapped one, to stroke the face of a dead child.
Tens of thousands of Gazans have been fleeing the crowded central districts of Bureij, Maghazi and Nusseirat, ordered out by Israeli forces whose tanks advanced from the north and east. Most have made their way south or west to the already overwhelmed city of Deir al-Balah, pitching makeshift tents made from sheets of plastic on whatever open ground they could find.
“We suffered a lot. We had the whole night without shelter, under rain and it was cold. We were with our kids and elderly women,” said Um Hamdi, cooking porridge in a pot over an open woodfire, surrounded by children.
Nearby, grey bearded Abdel Nasser Awadallah stood inside a wooden frame that would be wrapped in plastic to make a tent, and spoke of the family he had lost. “I buried my children, a 16 year old, another one aged 18. Something I really can’t believe, I buried my children at 6:00 am while their bodies were still warm. Also my nephew who was 2 years old, I buried him, I buried my wife,” he said.
“I never thought in my life that I will bury my children, I thought they would bury me.”
Twelve weeks after Hamas militants stormed Israeli towns, killing 1,200 people and seizing 240 hostages, Israeli forces have laid much of the Gaza Strip to waste. Nearly all its 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes at least once, and many are now fleeing for the third or fourth time.
Gaza health authorities say more than 21,000 people are confirmed killed – about 1 percent of the enclave’s population – with thousands more bodies feared unrecovered in the ruins. The United Nations says many thousands more may die from severe shortages of food, medicine, clean water and adequate shelter.
Displaced Gazans flee again as Israel launches fresh assaults
