Thousands of people broke into the warehouses of a United Nations agency to take flour and basic hygiene products, reflecting growing desperation and the breakdown of law and order as the war between Israel and Hamas militants, who rule Gaza, was three weeks old.
Tanks and infantry entered Gaza over the weekend and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a “second phase” of the war, three weeks after Hamas made a brutal incursion into Israel on October 7. The ground offensive grew as Israel struck the territory by land, sea and air.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said the death toll among Palestinians had exceeded 8,000 people, mostly women and children. It is a figure unprecedented in decades of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, and one that is expected to rise more rapidly as Israel advances its ground offensive.
The bombardment, described by residents of the territory as the most intense of the war, cut off most communications in the territory on Friday night, leaving the 2.3 million people of the besieged enclave practically isolated. Communications were mostly restored by Sunday morning.
The Israeli military said it hit some 450 military targets in the past 24 hours, including Hamas command centers, observation posts and anti-tank missile launch positions. The military also said more troops had been sent to Gaza overnight.
Thomas White, Gaza director of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, known by its acronym UNRWA, said the raid on its warehouses was “a worrying sign that civil order is beginning to crumble after three weeks of war.” and a harsh siege on Gaza. People are scared, frustrated and desperate,” he said.
The agency provides basic services to hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza. Its schools across the territory have become overcrowded shelters hosting Palestinians displaced by the conflict. Israel has only allowed a trickle of aid to pass through from Egypt, and part of those shipments were kept in one of the raided warehouses, UNRWA said.
Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for the agency, said the crowd forced its way into four precincts on Saturday. The warehouses contained no fuel, very scarce since Israel cut off all supplies at the start of the war.
Meanwhile, people living near Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest, reported Israeli airstrikes Sunday night near the hospital complex that blocked many roads leading to the center. Israel accuses Hamas of having a secret command center beneath the hospital, without providing much evidence.
Tens of thousands of civilians were sheltering in Shifa, which is also filled with patients injured in the airstrikes.
“Getting to the hospital has become increasingly difficult,” Mahmoud al-Sawah, who was sheltering in the hospital, said by phone on Sunday. “It seems they want to isolate the area.” Another Gaza resident, Abdallah Sayed, described Israeli air and ground attacks over the past two days as “the most violent and intense” since the war began.
The military recently presented computer-generated images of what it described as Hamas facilities in and around Shifa hospital, as well as interrogations of captured Hamas fighters who may have spoken under pressure. Israel has made similar claims before, but has not proven them.
Little is known about Hamas’ network of tunnels and other infrastructure, and it was not possible to independently verify those claims. The Hamas government denied the accusations and said they were intended to justify an attack on the site.
Another hospital in Gaza City received two calls on Sunday from Israeli authorities demanding its evacuation, according to a spokeswoman for the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS). Israeli airstrikes have hit buildings as far as 50 meters (yards) from the Al Quds hospital, where 12,000 people are sheltered.
Israel ordered the evacuation of the facility more than a week ago, but that and other medical centers have refused, stating that it would mean the death of patients connected to respirators. At first there were no Israeli statements about the evacuation order or the attacks near Shifa.
The Israeli military did not initially comment when asked about reports of attacks near Shifa.
Israel says most of the population has followed its orders to flee south, but hundreds of thousands of people remain, in part because Israel has also bombed targets in so-called safe zones.
An Israeli strike hit a two-story house in the southern town of Khan Younis on Sunday, killing at least 13 people, including 10 from the same family. The bodies were taken to the nearby Nasser hospital, according to an Associated Press journalist at the scene.
The escalation increased internal pressure on the Israeli government to secure the release of the approximately 230 hostages captured in the October 7 attack, when Hamas fighters left Gaza, overwhelmed Israeli defenses and assaulted nearby towns, killing civilians and soldiers in a surprise attack.
Desperate relatives met with Netanyahu on Saturday and expressed support for an exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.
Hamas’s top leader in Gaza, Yehia Sinwar, said Palestinian armed groups “are immediately ready” to release all hostages if Israel releases all the thousands of Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons. Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, an Israeli army spokesman, rejected the offer as “psychological terror.”
In his televised news conference, Netanyahu said the country is determined to recover all captives and that the ground operation “will help us in this mission.”
The president also acknowledged that the “debacle” of October 7, in which more than 1,400 people died, would require a thorough investigation and that “everyone will have to answer questions, including me.”
The Israeli military said it was gradually expanding its ground operations in Gaza, although it stopped short of calling it an invasion. Casualties on both sides were expected to rise sharply in fighting in densely populated residential areas.
Despite the Israeli offensive, Palestinian militants have continued to fire rockets into Israel, and the constant sound of air raid sirens in southern Israel is a reminder of the threat.
The Palestinian death toll in Gaza rose on Sunday to just over 8,000 people since the war began, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. That included more than 3,300 minors and more than 2,000 women, according to the ministry.
An estimated 1,700 people were still trapped under the rubble, according to the Ministry of Health, which has said it bases its calculations on emergency calls received.
Israel said its attacks target Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that the militants operate among civilians, putting them in danger.
More than 1.4 million people in Gaza have fled their homes and almost half of them have crowded United Nations shelters and schools, following repeated warnings from the Israeli army that they would be in danger in northern Gaza.
Gaza’s only solar power plant stopped working shortly after the start of the war and Israel has not allowed fuel to be brought in, saying Hamas would use it for military purposes.
Hospitals are trying to keep emergency generators running that power incubators and other vital equipment, and the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees is trying to keep water pumps and bakeries running to meet basic needs.
