Upset roads, increasingly rare cars, terror in the eyes of passers-by. This is how the market in Nusseirat - the 'capital' of the central sector of Gaza - looks shortly after yet another Israeli raid. The first rescue teams are still busy searching for survivors in the rubble when an ambulance speeds down the main road. It is headed west, towards the refugee camp, where another bombing is taking place at the same time. These days in the Strip people risk their lives even to shop at the market. "There is a smell of death in the air," say the last traders.
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On the side of the road, the Abu Dallal supermarket - the largest in Gaza - appears to be in ruins. The bombing has just ended, leaving a trail of destruction. Behind the structure was the private home of the Abu Dallal family, gutted by a bomb. The walls are unsafe but the neighbors are scrambling to dig through the rubble with their bare hands in an attempt to save someone. Hamas' health ministry said there were "numerous deaths and injuries" in Nusseirat. Another 18 victims, in the same hours, were in the nearby towns of Deir el-Ballah and Rafah. While in the evening, in Tel Aviv, the military spokesman said that in Nusseirat "the deputy commander of a Hamas battalion involved in the massacre at Kibbutz Beeri on October 7" was eliminated.
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Along bumpy and bumpy roads, the dead and injured are transported to the collapsing Shuhada Hospital in Khan Yunes. The hospital runs on the last stocks of fuel, which it is forced to dose. With a daily average of dozens, hundreds of dead, the bodies are now lined up in the parking lot, wrapped in shrouds. The request to the families is to take them as soon as possible for burial.
Faced with these traumatic images, many families - who arrived a week ago from the north of the Strip after Israel had assured that they would be safe and supported by humanitarian aid in this area - decided today to take the opposite route and return to the north. "It's better to go back to our home," they say, "even if we still have to be bombed. Better there, even in a damaged house, than here as refugees."
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Also today, 20 trucks with humanitarian aid entered through the Rafah crossing. But these are paltry amounts compared to the needs of hundreds of thousands of displaced people. The cargo was medicines, water and food. In practice, nothing has reached the refugees, aid has only been distributed to hospitals. In particular, there is a need for fuel and flour to distribute bread to the population. In the entire central sector of Gaza, only two bakeries are still in operation. At the entrance there are constantly very long queues, while other evacuees wander the streets with yellow and blue jerry cans in the hope of recovering even a few drops of drinking water.
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