Israel’s strikes on the Gaza Strip have led to an “unprecedented human catastrophe” in the Palestinian territory, the United Nations agency supporting Palestinian refugees said Sunday.
“Not one drop of water, not one grain of wheat, not a litre of fuel has been allowed in the Gaza Strip for the last eight days,” Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of UNRWA, told journalists.
Israel on Sunday said water had resumed to the south of the Palestinian enclave.
The death toll from Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip surged to at least 2,670 since Hamas’s bloody attack on southern Israel last week, the Gaza health ministry said.
Another 9,600 people have also been injured as Israel continued its blistering air campaign on targets in the Palestinian coastal enclave, the Hamas-controlled ministry added.
The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon said its headquarters was struck by a rocket in the southern town of Naqoura, amid exchanges of fire on the border with Israel.
“Our headquarters in Naqoura was hit with a rocket and we are working to verify from where. Our peacekeepers were not in shelters at the time. Fortunately, no one was hurt,” UNIFIL said in a statement.
Israeli forces were Sunday readying for a looming Gaza ground invasion aimed at destroying Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that unleashed the bloodiest attack in the country’s history.
In the eight days since Hamas gunmen killed more than 1,300 Israelis in their surprise onslaught, Israel has responded with a devastating bombing campaign that has claimed over 2,300 lives in Gaza.
Fear and chaos reigned in the 40-kilometre (25-mile) long strip that is one of the world’s most densely populated areas and where the UN estimated that one million have been displaced in the war’s first week.
Entire Gaza city blocks lay in ruins and hospitals were overflowing with thousands of wounded in the besieged territory, but there were fears of worse to come.
A bereaved and infuriated Israel has massed forces outside the long-blockaded enclave of 2.4 million in preparation for what the army has said would be a land, air and sea attack involving a “significant ground operation”.
Israel has also stationed troops and tanks on its UN-patrolled northern border with Lebanon and closed a four kilometre (2.5 mile) wide zone there to civilians after deadly exchanges of cross-border fire with Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited front line troops in the south near Gaza on Saturday, wearing a flak jacket. “Are you ready for what is coming?” he said. “More is coming.”
Israel’s military spokesmen have repeatedly said that the army is ready for a ground operation but awaiting a “political decision” on the timing.
Special forces have made forays into Gaza and recovered the bodies of some of the 126 confirmed hostages taken by Hamas, the army said without specifying how many.
A Gaza ground invasion threatens to bring the kind of gruelling house-to-house fighting that devastated Iraq’s Mosul and Fallujah in years past, further complicated for Israeli forces by Hamas’ vast tunnel network.
Israel has warned 1.1 million Palestinians to leave northern Gaza and a steady stream of families in overloaded cars, trucks and donkey carts have since headed south.
Israel has accused Hamas of blocking them from fleeing in order to use them as “human shields”.
The United States said Sunday it fears an escalation of the war between Israel and Hamas and the prospect of Iran getting directly involved.
Speaking on CBS, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan cited the possibility of a new battle front on the Israel-Lebanon border and added, “We can’t rule out that Iran would choose to get directly engaged some way. We have to prepare for every possible contingency.”
China supports the “just cause of the Palestinian people in safeguarding their national rights”, foreign minister Wang Yi told his Iranian counterpart on Sunday as Beijing takes an increasingly clear stance on the Israel-Gaza conflict.
“The root cause… of the Palestine-Israel situation is that the Palestinian people’s right to statehood has been set aside for a long time,” Wang said in a call with Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Sunday, according to an official Chinese readout.
“This historical injustice should end as soon as possible,” Wang said, adding that “China will continue to stand on the side of peace and support the just cause of the Palestinian people in safeguarding their national rights.”
More than one million people in the northern part of the crowded enclave of Gaza have been ordered to flee ahead of an expected major ground offensive by Israel, an exodus that aid groups said would cause a humanitarian disaster.
Wang said in a call on Sunday with Saudi Arabia’s Prince Faisal bin Farhan that Israel’s actions were now “beyond the scope of self-defence” and the Israeli government must “cease its collective punishment of the people of Gaza”.
“(Israel) should listen earnestly to the calls of the international community and the UN secretary general, and cease its collective punishment of the people of Gaza,” Wang added in a change from Beijing’s earlier ambiguous statements on the conflict.
Wang told Prince Faisal that “all parties should not take any action to escalate the situation and should return to the negotiating table as soon as possible”.
China’s official statements on the conflict have not specifically named Hamas in their condemnations of violence, leading to criticism from some Western officials who said they were too weak.
The country’s state broadcaster CCTV said on Sunday that China’s special envoy Zhai Jun will visit the Middle East next week to push for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict and promote peace talks.
Alarm has grown about a wider humanitarian disaster in Gaza where Israel has cut off water, food and power, vowing to maintain the complete siege until all hostages are freed.
“An estimated one million people have been displaced in the first seven days” of the war in Gaza, Juliette Touma of the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees told AFP.
“The situation is catastrophic,” said Jumaa Nasser, who travelled from Beit Lahia in northern Gaza with his wife, mother and seven children. “We’ve had no food or sleep. We don’t know what to do. I’ve given my fate up to God.”
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi charged that Israel’s actions have gone “beyond the scope of self-defence” and said it must “cease its collective punishment of the people of Gaza”.
Egypt to the south controls the only other crossing with Gaza but has so far refused to open it to help evacuate foreign citizens unless aid convoys are allowed to enter, according to unnamed intelligence sources cited in media reports.
Anger has flared in much of the Muslim world and beyond, with pro-Palestinian protesters burning Israeli and American flags.
Militant groups allied with Israel’s arch foe Iran have a strong presence in Lebanon and Syria, heightening the risk of a multi-front war for Israel’s army as deadly clashes have also flared in the occupied West Bank.
The United States has deployed a second aircraft carrier to the region in an effort to “deter hostile actions against Israel”, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said.
The mood in Israel has swung between collective grief, fury and a strong desire to punish Hamas which Netanyahu has likened to the Islamic State group.
Public outrage has been fuelled by images and reports virally shared on social media of youths and families shot, stabbed, burnt and mutilated in the Hamas attack, and by deep fears about the hostages.
“We must bring them back home alive,” said a tearful Yrat Zailer, the aunt of children aged nine months and four years who were abducted with their mother.
Israel pushed on with its evacuation of southern towns close to Gaza that were targeted in the Hamas attacks. Packed buses were taking families to hotels in Jerusalem and the Red Sea resort city Eilat.
“It’s hard, I’m crying,” said Helen Afteker, 50, an evacue from the town of Sderot. “It’s terrifying every time there’s a warning, we have to leave. It’s better for the children.”
Planeloads of Israelis have returned from around the world to join the latest of the many wars in Israel’s 75-year history.
The foreign minister of Israel’s arch foe Iran, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, warned that if Israel’s attacks “against the defenceless … people of Gaza continue, no one can guarantee the control of the situation and the non-expansion of the conflicts”.
Over the past week, Israel has levelled thousands of buildings in Gaza while Hamas has fired thousands more rockets at Israel, most intercepted by missile defence systems.
Gaza’s electricity outage threatens to cripple the enclave’s life-support systems, from sea water desalination plants to food refrigeration and incubators in hospitals.
Pope Francis called for humanitarian corridors in Gaza and urged that “children, the sick, the elderly, women and all civilians should not fall victim to the conflict”.
“There have already been so many deaths, please let’s not shed any more innocent blood,” he said, castigating “the diabolical force of hatred, terrorism and war”.
