Five days after breaking the January ceasefire accord, Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza has claimed nearly 700 lives, with the overall death toll since October 2023 surpassing 50,000, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The bombardment has left civil defence teams warning of “imminent danger” to 50,000 civilians trapped in western Rafah as Israeli forces tighten their grip on the southern Gaza Strip.
Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza targets hospitals
In a particularly troubling development yesterday, an Israeli drone strike targeted the second floor of Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, killing five people including Ismail Barhoum, a member of Hamas’s political bureau. The attack has rendered the hospital’s emergency department “completely out of service”, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Barhoum was receiving treatment for critical injuries sustained in an earlier bombing. He is the fifth member of Hamas’s 20-person political bureau—officials who hold non-combat roles—to be assassinated in the past week alone. The others include Salah Bardawil, Issam Daalis, Yasser Harb and Mohammed Al-Jamasi.
“The targeting of leader Barhoum, as he was undergoing treatment within a hospital ward, is yet another crime added to the occupation’s extensive record of terrorism, violating sanctities, lives and health facilities,” Hamas said in a statement. “It again confirms its disregard for all international conventions,” the resistance organisation said.
With the attack on Nasser Hospital, just three hospitals remain functioning in southern Gaza. The health ministry claims Israel is “attempting to obstruct the operations of these hospitals to facilitate the displacement of Palestinians.”
Earlier, Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza destroyed the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, which was the enclave’s only cancer centre.
Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza traps citizens
In western Rafah, the situation has grown increasingly dire due to Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza. The enclave’s civil defence authority warned that more than 50,000 people face “imminent danger” after being surrounded by Israeli forces in the Barakasat area. Contact has been lost with civil defence crews who attempted to rescue Red Crescent personnel in the same area.
“We warn against harming civil defence crews who were besieged in the same area after intervening to rescue Red Crescent crews,” the authority said. “Contact with them remains lost.”
Meanwhile, Rafah municipality reported that “the occupation has forced thousands of families to relocate from the Tal Al-Sultan neighbourhood in the western part of the city under heavy bombardment.” Municipal workers remain trapped alongside residents inside the neighbourhood.
The human toll
The statistics are grim. According to Gaza’s health ministry, 41 people were killed and 61 injured due to Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza in the 24 hours to March 23rd. Some victims remain “under the rubble and on the roads, unable to be reached by ambulance and civil defence crews.”
Since Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza started on March 18th, the ministry reports 673 people have been killed and 1,233 injured. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) had put the cumulative toll of Israeli military action on Gaza at 48,577 as of March 17th, including 13,319 children, 7,216 women and 3,447 elderly.
The ministry now places the total death toll since October 7th, 2023, at 50,021, with 113,274 injured. It noted that 233 additional deaths had been added to the cumulative statistics after data was completed and approved by a judicial committee following up on reports and missing persons.
Humanitarian crisis deepens
Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza has further exacerbated the enclave’s humanitarian catastrophe. According to Gaza’s government media office, more than 2.4m Palestinians face an “unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe” as Israel maintains the closure of crossings and prevents the entry of aid.
“The Palestinian people are suffering from a deliberate starvation policy, as occupation forces block food and medical supplies, leading to soaring hunger and malnutrition rates, particularly among more than one million children and the elderly,” the office stated.
The situation is compounded by a severe water crisis, with the media office claiming that Israeli forces are “destroying water wells and making it increasingly difficult for civilians to access clean water.” The blockade on cooking gas and fuel has also led to the shutdown of bakeries and essential facilities, “paralysing transportation and making movement within the Strip nearly impossible.”
Political context
Hamas has condemned both Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza and strikes on Lebanon and Syria, calling them “a blatant violation of national sovereignty and international laws.” The group called for “a unified Arab and Islamic stance” against what it described as “the arrogance and ongoing crimes of the enemy.”
The resumption of hostilities comes amid claims by far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had adopted his demand to resume the war. Hamas claimed these statements “clearly refute the false American accusations against Hamas, which seek to blame the movement for obstructing the signed agreement.”
Meanwhile, another far-right minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has called for the expansion of settlement activity in the occupied West Bank, which Hamas denounced as “a desperate attempt to impose new realities on the ground and entrench the colonial occupation of our Palestinian land.”
International response
The Gaza government media office has called on the international community to “fulfil its legal and moral responsibilities by taking immediate action to halt the crimes committed by the Israeli occupation.” It demanded “the urgent opening of crossings to allow humanitarian aid to enter and to save the lives of innocent civilians facing slow death in Gaza.”
However, it accused the international community of maintaining a “shameful silence” that “only emboldens the occupation to persist in its crimes without accountability.”
Hamas has called on the guarantor mediators and the US administration to hold Mr Netanyahu’s government, “which thirsts for the blood of children and women, accountable for the collapse of the ceasefire agreement and to pressure it into halting its aggression and returning to negotiations.”
For the 2.4m Palestinians in the entrapped strip, Israel’s renewed assault on Gaza means a return to the nightmare that has defined their existence since October 2023. With hospitals under attack, thousands trapped in combat zones, and basic necessities in dwindling supply, the humanitarian situation threatens to plunge to new depths in the coming days.
