Gazans say nowhere to go as they prepare for Israeli assault after Hamas raid
Gaza are preparing for an Israeli offensive of unprecedented scale after Saturday's deadly Hamas raid, with more than 130,000 fleeing their homes and stockpiling supplies as air strikes pound the crowded enclave with 560 already dead.
Amid an intensified Israeli siege cutting off water, food and power, and a sudden new assault, conditions look worse than at any point since Palestinian refugees flocked there during the 1948 fighting when Israel was founded.
Israeli military phone messages have warned people to leave some areas, indicating a new ground attack that could eclipse previous bouts of destructive warfare in the dense concrete townships that grew up in Gaza's original tented refugee camps.
«Where should we go? Where should we go?» asked 55-year-old Mohammad Brais.
He had fled his home near a possible front line to shelter at his shop — only for that to get hit in one of the hundreds of air and artillery strikes already pounding Gaza.
The surprise Hamas attack on Saturday caused Israel its bloodiest day, as fighters smashed through border defences and marauded through towns, killing more than 800 people and dragging more than 100 into captivity in Gaza.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned that the price Gaza would pay «will change reality for generations» and Israel was imposing a total blockade with a ban on food and fuel imports as part of a battle against «human animals».
At the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, men clambered on a pancaked building to pull an infant's tiny body from the rubble, carrying it down through the crowd below amid still-smouldering remains of bombed buildings.
