These devastating attacks unfolded overnight on Thursday, targeting four residential tower blocks in the heart of the Gaza Strip, where an entire district of about 25 multi-storey apartment buildings was razed to the ground.
Prior to the airstrikes, the Israeli occupation army had notified residents residing in the 270-apartment towers of their intention to shell the buildings, prompting evacuations.
Residents said they received Israeli warning messages on their mobile phones at breakfast time, followed 10 minutes later by a small drone strike that hammered the message home. Half an hour after the initial warning, F-16 fighter jets brought the buildings down in huge explosions and clouds of dust.
“Everything I ever dreamt of and thought that I have achieved was gone. In that apartment was my dream, my memories with my children, and my wife, was the smell of safety and love,” Ali, a resident of the district, told Reuters news agency by phone.
Tragically, sources have confirmed that warplanes also carried out an attack on a residence in the center of Khan Younis in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, leading to the loss of 13 lives and inflicting injuries on numerous others.
Amid ongoing Israeli strikes, some Palestinians who had initially heeded the Israeli evacuation orders and moved south to ensure their safety are now returning to their homes in the face of the continued onslaught.
UN spokesperson for the human rights office, Ravina Shamdasani, expressed deep concern over the persistent heavy strikes by Israeli forces in various parts of Gaza, including the southern region.
She conveyed this concern during a press briefing, stating, "The strikes, coupled with extremely difficult living conditions in the south, appear to have pushed some to return to the north, despite the continuing heavy bombing there."
Shamdasani highlighted the distressing choice faced by one unnamed Palestinian, who remarked, "I might as well die in my own house."
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has reported that Israeli air attacks have resulted in the destruction of 25 percent of Gaza's residential buildings, equating to over 98,000 housing units, since Israel initiated its bombing campaign on October 7.
Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari said in his daily update on the conflict that the rate of attacks by Israel’s air forces on the Gaza Strip has not been seen in “decades”.
According to Gaza’s health ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra, 4,137 people have been killed so far in Israeli attacks on Gaza including 1,661 children. There are 13,260 people wounded, al-Qudra said.