Gaza Strip
The only power plant in the Gaza Strip, which is under fierce Israeli bombardment and siege, shut down on Wednesday after it ran out of fuel, said the Palestinian enclave’s electricity authority.
“The only power plant in the Gaza Strip stopped functioning at 2pm (1100 GMT),” the authority’s head Jalal Ismail said in a statement, having earlier warned that it was running short of fuel.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees told Al Jazeera that it had less than two weeks’ supply of food and water to assist the more than 180,000 Palestinians who have sought refuge in their schools in Gaza.
Gaza’s health ministry said on Wednesday afternoon at least 1,055 Palestinians had been killed and 5,184 injured in the crowded coastal enclave since Saturday’s surprise attack while Israel’s military said the death toll there had reached 1,200 and more than 2,700 people had been wounded. Israel’s army said the bodies of roughly 1,500 fighters had been found.
Israel said it had regained control of the border areas from the Palestinian group Hamas.
Fears of a regional conflagration have surged ahead of an expected Israeli ground incursion into Gaza, the crowded, impoverished enclave from where Hamas launched its land, air and sea attack on the Jewish Sabbath.
International NGOs issued a stark warning over the health and humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.
Deadly airstrikes
“My entire life, I have seen Israel kill us, confiscate our lands and arrest our children,” said Farah al-Saadi, 52, a coffee vendor from Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank who praised the Hamas offensive.
The Israeli army has called up 300,000 reservists and massed tanks and other heavy armour both near Gaza and on the northern border with Lebanon, where exchanges of fire continued.
The military said its forces had largely reclaimed the embattled south and the border around Gaza, and dislodged holdout Hamas fighters from more than a dozen towns and kibbutzim.
Earlier, for the third time in 24 hours, an Israeli air strike hit Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt, an AFP photographer and an NGO said.
White smoke billowed from among fishing boats after an air strike on Gaza’s port, and in Jerusalem, the deserted streets were targeted by Hamas rocket fire.
“Israeli people they are scared of the Arabs and the Arabs are scared of the Jews… everybody is scared of each other,” said Ahmed Karkash, a shop owner in the Old City.
At least 30 more killed as Israel pounds Gaza overnight
At least 30 people have been killed and hundreds wounded as Israel pounded the Gaza Strip with hundreds of air strikes overnight, a Hamas government official said on Wednesday.
Dozens of residential buildings, factories, mosques and shops were hit, the head of the government’s media office, Salama Marouf, told AFP.
The Israeli military said it had hit several “Hamas targets” during the night. It said fighter jets destroyed “advanced detection systems” that Hamas used to spot military aircraft.
They also hit “80 Hamas targets” in the Beit Hanoun area of the northeastern Gaza Strip, including two bank branches allegedly used by the group to “fund terrorism” in the enclave, the military said.
Air strikes also hit a weapons storage facility and an operational command centre used by Hamas, it added.
