We are being bombed in total silence, said human rights activist and journalist Maha Hussaini, describing the current situation in Gaza as her biggest fear and accusing Israel of cutting off residents in the enclave from the outside world, as fierce Israeli airstrikes continued on Wednesday.
Israel has vowed swift punishment for the deadliest Palestinian militant attack in its 75-year history, which left corpses strewn around a music festival and a kibbutz community.
Israel’s death toll rose to 1,200 with over 2,700 wounded, its military said, from the militants’ hours-long rampage after breaching the border fence enclosing Gaza on Saturday.
Israel has already tightened its blockade of Gaza, fully banning food and fuel imports and cutting the electricity supply. Israeli minister for military affairs Yoav Gallant warned that the price Gaza would pay “will change reality for generations.”
“Israel is gradually trying to ban telecommunication companies and disrupt telecommunication services in Gaza, so that a genocide, bombing and wiping out of entire neighborhood and residential blocks would be done with complete blackout, without those people speaking up or speaking to the world,” added Hussaini.
Since the start of the war on Saturday, residents fled their houses in the Gaza Strip, and some have sought refuge in UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) schools.
“There are no shelters by the definition of shelters in the Gaza strip,” said the country relation manager for the MENA Oxfam, Najla Shawa, adding that UNRWA schools have reached there maximum capacity.
On October 10, Israel refused a request to bring food and medical supplies into the Gaza Strip, Hussein al-Sheikh, secretary general of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization PLO, said.
The passage of people and goods is strictly controlled under a blockade of Gaza enforced by Egypt and Israel, and was closed for the movement of goods, according to the United Nations humanitarian office.
(Source: Reuters)
