Difficult moments are being experienced by the Palestinians, including the Hamouda family, who is still trapped inside their home in the town of Beit Lahia, the last refuge for the people of northern Gaza, as the massacres continue since the start of the Israeli military operation on October 5th.
Describing the suffering of the Palestinians in northern Gaza amidst death, hunger and terror, Osama Hamouda, a member of the besieged family, said, “In the past nights, the Israeli occupation army intensified its targeting of the town and its surroundings, and vehicles advanced towards citizens’ homes and shelter centers from more than one axis, and drones and snipers covered the area with fire, targeting every target.” mobile”.
“In addition, the Israeli forces carried out bombing and bombing operations that affected a number of streets in the town, leaving massive destruction in citizens’ homes and infrastructure, which was revealed with the rising of the morning sun and the repositioning of the Israeli forces,” according to Hamouda.
Regarding the moments of terror that he and his family experienced recently, he said, “We did not expect to survive that night or in any way. We were waiting for the moment when the house collapsed on us, but God’s care preserved us and we are still alive until this time.”
During the past weeks, the occupation army forced the Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip to flee outside the governorate, but those who refused the orders headed to Beit Lahia, where the displaced stayed in some shelter centers and homes.
The displaced people in Beit Lahia are living in catastrophic conditions due to the lack of water and food and the escalating Israeli bombing against them.
On the fifth of last October, the occupation army began a ground invasion of northern Gaza under the pretext of “preventing the Hamas movement from regaining its power in the region,” while the Palestinians say that Israel wants to occupy the northern Gaza Strip and turn it into a buffer zone after displacing its residents.
Scary nights
Hamouda said, “Since the beginning of the Israeli military operation, we have refused to leave our house despite the army and vehicles approaching us more than once and the continuous bombing, which intensifies daily.”
The besieged Palestinian explained, “We suffer from a lack of water and food, and above all, death is spreading everywhere, because the occupation is trying to push us out at any cost in order to implement its settlement plans.”
Regarding Israel’s intensification of targeting the last refuge for the people of the north, Hamouda said, “The previous nights were different. For the first time, snipers deployed, and vehicles suddenly advanced from several axes, carrying out a series of bombing operations in the town, and penetrating into streets they had not entered before.”
Hamouda added that the most difficult bombing operations were in the vicinity of the Awni Al-Harthani School, which was used as a shelter center during the war, before it was burned more than once during the current invasion. Also, bombings were carried out in the streets of the Beit Lahia project extensively, and the houses there turned into rubble.
The same suffering is experienced by the young man, Moamen Qadous, who was displaced in the “Abu Tammam” school in the center of Beit Lahia.
Qadous said, “We thought more than once in the past nights that the army would storm the school to force us to move or arrest us, because the sounds of the vehicles were getting very close to us and we could hear them clearly.”
He added that the previous nights were very difficult, and not a minute was without the sound of bombing, bombing, or gunfire.
Describing the situation inside the shelter where he resides, he said that it was “catastrophic, and fear is spreading everywhere and among the displaced, most of whom are women and children.”
He stressed, “We expected the military operation to end in a few weeks like its predecessors, but as it approached the end of its second month, the situation became more difficult and death approached closer to every person who held out in the northern Gaza Strip.”
Endless massacres
The massacres committed by the occupation army in the northern Gaza Strip do not stop, and they have increased over the past few days in Beit Lahia, the last refuge for the displaced in the region.
The most prominent massacres committed by the Israeli army during the past two days were against the families of: Al-Baba, Ahmed, and Al-Araj.
No medical teams were able to reach the targeted homes due to the emergency system being out of action in the northern Gaza Strip for weeks, and ambulances and civil defense vehicles were destroyed.
According to medical sources who spoke to Anadolu’s correspondent, the Israeli massacres from Thursday to Saturday resulted in the martyrdom of about 150 Palestinians, most of whom fell in Beit Lahia.
Despite the inability of medical teams to work in the northern Gaza Strip, some young men and residents are trying to go towards the targeted homes to try to extract the bodies of the dead and injured and transport them for treatment.
Among them is the young man Saeb Youssef, who arrived at more than one house that the Israeli army bombed over the heads of its people in the town of Beit Lahia during the past days.
Youssef said, “We are trying as much as possible to extract the bodies and injured people without any equipment. We succeeded several times, and many times we stood helpless and were unable to do anything, despite hearing the voices of living citizens asking for help under the rubble.”
He stressed, “Every house is bombed with dozens of displaced people, and they all die because there is no way to save them or remove the rubble from above them.”
Youssef concluded by saying, “If there were possibilities to recover the victims, the number of deaths would be much less than that, but the occupation is deliberately increasing the number of martyrs to take revenge on those who refused to flee and leave their homes.”
With American support, since October 7, 2023, Israel has been waging a war on the Gaza Strip that has left more than 146,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded – most of them children and women – and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that killed dozens of children and the elderly, in one of the worst disasters. Humanity in the world.
