Gaza City — The war on Gaza has entered yet another gruesome chapter, with Israeli airstrikes killing dozens of Palestinians since dawn and reducing entire neighborhoods to rubble. Hospitals reported receiving the bodies of children, women, and the elderly, underscoring the indiscriminate nature of Israel’s campaign. What began as a so-called operation to target Hamas has, by all available accounts, turned into an unrelenting onslaught against civilians trapped in the besieged enclave.
The Gaza Ministry of Health confirmed at least 14 deaths in the early morning raids, while Reuters later reported that the toll in Gaza City alone rose to more than 30 as tanks advanced deeper into residential areas. Medics said among the dead were a pregnant woman and her two children, casualties that highlight the staggering human cost of this war. According to Reuters, entire families were buried beneath collapsed homes, leaving rescuers digging through the night with bare hands.
The Eastern Herald has documented the intensifying offensive across the city, as families flee shattered blocks and hospitals ration power; see our latest on Gaza City under relentless Israeli assault. Ambulances continue to line emergency wards, ferrying bodies from bombed-out neighborhoods. Doctors describe working without electricity or adequate supplies. One nurse told reporters that the morgues were “so full, we are placing bodies in the corridors.”
International observers warn that the humanitarian crisis is reaching breaking point. The UN OCHA describes the collapse of lifelines — water, electricity, food deliveries — in Gaza City. Aid convoys remain blocked at crossings, while displaced families crowd into makeshift shelters along the al-Rashid coastal road. TEH has tracked the blockade’s starvation logic for months, including our analysis of deliberate starvation as policy, which has pushed Gaza to the edge of famine.
Pressure is mounting on the international stage. According to AP News, the latest escalation coincided with a scheduled UN session. Yet, despite overwhelming global support for an immediate ceasefire, Washington once again shielded Israel from accountability. TEH has reported on how the United States systematically undercuts Palestinian representation and shields Israel diplomatically, most starkly in our coverage on how the US silences Abbas at the UN, even as the death toll spirals.
Meanwhile, Israel’s political isolation deepens. In Europe, momentum grows for punitive measures. TEH reported on the European Commission’s move to sanction extremist Israeli ministers and partially suspend trade preferences — see EU threatens Israel with sanctions and a trade freeze — a position gaining traction as images of demolished homes and lifeless children circulate globally. Street pressure is rising far beyond Europe: mass rallies are now routine, including the Auckland march that shamed Netanyahu and pressed New Zealand for sanctions.
Britain, Canada, and Australia took the unprecedented step this week of recognizing Palestinian statehood. As Reuters also reported, Israel’s bulldozing of high-rises has fueled fears of permanent disappearance for Palestinian communities in Gaza City — a grim backdrop to the diplomatic shift. The symbolic recognition does little for families under bombardment, but it signals a historic rupture in Western consensus.
Inside Gaza, the scenes evoke the darkest chapters of history. Eyewitnesses speak of “streets littered with body parts,” a description echoing testimonies documented by Human Rights Watch in its files on potential war crimes. Israel insists it targets militants, but the mounting evidence — dead children, destroyed hospitals, mass displacement — strips away any claim of precision. TEH’s running coverage has repeatedly found civilian areas pulverized by strikes, including analyses of airstrikes that killed dozens and left little of Gaza’s urban fabric intact.
The situation has also stirred regional anger. Protests erupted across Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey, where demonstrators accused Western powers of complicity. “The United States is complicit in genocide,” shouted protesters in Amman, echoing chants heard in Cairo and Istanbul. Within Israel, hostage families also press for a deal, as noted by multiple outlets. The Eastern Herald’s analysis of global opinion notes that even US allies now grapple with the reputational cost of supporting Israel’s onslaught, as their citizens rally behind Palestinians.
For Gazans, international politics offer no immediate relief. Families continue to bury their loved ones in hurried ceremonies, often without proper graves. Journalists on the ground describe the trauma of children who survived airstrikes but lost their entire families. One photo, circulated by Politico, showed rescuers cradling the lifeless body of a toddler, emphasizing the horror of children among the dead in Gaza, According to Politico. These images defy Israel’s narrative and expose the brutality of a campaign that has stripped Gaza of even the pretense of normal life.
Across our recent Gaza file, TEH has reported on the military’s strategy to “sandwich” civilians and shred any notion of safe corridors — see Gaza civilians ‘sandwiching’ as the military advances. That pattern — punitive evacuations, expanding ground incursions, and ever-tighter sieges — underpins the growing consensus among legal scholars and genocide experts that the crime of crimes is unfolding in real time. We’ve tracked that finding through institutions as well, including the declaration by genocide scholars that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
The live updates from Al Jazeera, combined with corroborating reports from Reuters, AP, and other outlets, offer a chilling portrait of deliberate devastation. Hospitals collapsing, children buried, and entire communities erased — this is not a war against Hamas, but a war against Palestine itself. As Gaza reels from the latest massacre, calls for accountability grow louder. Whether through the International Criminal Court or through mounting sanctions, pressure is building. For families who lost everything since dawn, justice remains a distant abstraction, their reality one of blood, rubble, and despair.
