Israel continued its bombardment of the Gaza Strip on Monday as it prepared to launch a ground attack on the besieged city that is residence to roughly 2.3 million people, Al Arabiya reported.
Gazans struggled to maintain the dwindling food and water supplies, while hospitals cautioned that they were on the edge of collapse.
Israel has attacked neighborhood after neighborhood in Gaza, killing at least 2,670 Palestinians; the Palestinian health ministry has confirmed that over 700 of those killed by Israel were children.
At least 9,600 others were seriously injured since Israel’s attack.
Israeli forces, backed by a growing deployment of US warships in the region and the call-up of some 360,000 reservists, have placed themselves along Gaza’s border and started exercises for what Israel said would be a comprehensive campaign to dismantle the Palestinian militant group Hamas, the Associated Press reported.
Israel said it has already hit dozens of military targets, including command centers and rocket launchers, and also killed Hamas commanders.
Israeli officials have provided no timetable for a ground invasion that aid groups alert could hasten a humanitarian crisis in the coastal Gaza enclave.
Nearly half a million people, about one-quarter of Gaza’s population, have sought refuge in United Nations schools and other facilities across the territory, where water supplies were dwindling, said Juliette Touma, spokesperson for the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency. “Gaza is running dry,” she said.
