RAFAH: Health ministry in Gaza said on Monday that more than 5,000 people have been killed in the besieged Palestinian enclave since Israel launched its withering bombing campaign more than two weeks ago.
Alarm has surged about the spiralling humanitarian crisis in Gaza amid the war sparked by the October 7 attack.
On a day when Israel's army reported more than 300 new strikes within 24 hours, Gaza's health ministry said the death toll had surged above 5,000, more than 2,000 of them children.
Thousands of buildings have been destroyed and more than one million people displaced in the territory that has been under siege and largely deprived of water, food and other basic supplies.
The Israeli military said it had hit "over 320 military targets in the Gaza Strip" in the past 24 hours.
Rafah resident Mohammed Abu Sabalah said he had returned home from the local mosque after dawn prayers on Monday and that "a quarter of an hour later there was a bombing".
"We couldn't see anything because of the thick smoke," he said, adding that "we thank God that we've emerged safe and sound" with "only a few windows and doors destroyed".
Tensions have been inflamed in the occupied West Bank, where 95 Palestinians have been killed in clashes involving Israeli security forces or settlers since fighting began in Gaza, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry.
In Gaza, where thousands have been wounded, the health ministry issued a statement saying "citizens are called upon to immediately go to hospitals and blood bank branches to donate blood".
Alarm has grown about the dire needs of the 2.4 million civilians trapped inside the 40-kilometre long coastal strip that was already blockaded and impoverished before the war.
Children killed in the southern city of Khan Yunis were laid to rest in a makeshift grave, while in Rafah men were filling plastic jerrycans from containers with now scare safe drinking water.
US President Joe Biden brokered the passage of aid convoys with Egyptian and Israeli leaders in talks last week -- but the United Nations estimates Gaza needs about 100 trucks of relief goods every day.
UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said Sunday's delivery of food, water and medical supplies was "another small glimmer of hope for the millions of people in dire need of humanitarian aid. Israel has rejected the entry of fuel into Gaza. — AFP
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
