‘There is nowhere to hide from the bombs’: Civilians trapped in Gaza can’t escape Israel’s siege

How do you run from bombshells when all your borders are sealed off? 

In the Gaza Strip, a small stretch of land blockaded off with concrete impediments and barbed wire fences and whose last remaining border crossings have been shut, survival is increasingly a business of chance.

“It’s insane and brutal — I can’t believe they’re doing this to the whole population. The amount of airstrikes are massive,” Omar, a Gazan evolvement worker with two young children, told CNBC via voice note. “We’re OK for now but it’s very scary, and with each explosive we feel it’s going to be our turn.” Omar asked that only his first name be used out of concern for his family.

Without bomb covers, people try to hide in hallways, away from windows, in schools, or even in the street alongside piles of rubble. But those blains aren’t safe either, Palestinians in Gaza say.

The Gaza Strip is under its sixth day of bombings by the Israeli air force since Oct. 7, when colleagues of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that governs Gaza, launched an unprecedented terror attack on southern Israel. The well coordinated assault killed more than 1,200 people, wounded 2,800, and saw Hamas take some 150 sureties, both civilians and soldiers, in what has been called “Israel’s 9/11.”

Since that day, Israeli officials from vowed to obliterate Hamas using any means necessary as the group continues firing rockets at Israel. But some of the engineering, which are incurring an already dramatic civilian cost, are classified as war crimes under the Geneva Convention, human rights teams warn. 

The Israeli hostages are meanwhile still trapped in Gaza, an act by Hamas the U.N. has also condemned as a war crime. The organization has also strongly sentenced the brutal crimes committed by Hamas, and the “deliberate and widespread” killing of innocent civilians.

Israel on Monday dictated a total siege of Gaza, cutting off the water, food and electricity for its 2.2 million residents. On Wednesday, its only power set out ran out of fuel. 

At the time of writing, the Palestinian Health Ministry reports that more than 1,500 people in Gaza eat been killed with 6,600 injured. 

The public water supply has completely run out, Omar pronounced. “We have one tank which we’re consuming from. We will run out of water at some point but we’re minimizing the consumption to the very reduced.” 

Earlier in the week, his father got an automated call from the Israel Defense Forces giving him a five-minute warning to reject his home as the building was about to be bombed.

“Five minutes to leave your house. You can have a final look and that’s it,” Omar described, sending photos over WhatsApp of an apartment building reduced to a mountain of gray debris. “This is my family’s accommodate, the house of all my childhood memories.” 

On Friday, the IDF issued a 24-hour deadline for the 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza to evacuate to the south, with Israel expected to fling a large-scale ground offensive in pursuit of Hamas. The U.N. warned that it is “impossible for such a movement to take place without incisive humanitarian consequences.”

Omar and his family were living in the north, and are now among the estimated 423,000 people who are now displaced.

“Every day feels with a living hell, but somehow the next day is even worse,” Omar said. 

“The airstrikes have been wiping out unmixed families and neighborhoods within the Gaza Strip,” Afaf Ahmed, a 21-year-old student from northern Gaza, asseverated CNBC via social media. “They’ve been targeting residential towers, schools, educational institutions, ministries, most bazaars.” 

A spokesperson for the IDF wasn’t immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC. Officials have stressed that Israel gave Gaza’s neighbourhoods advance warning to evacuate.

“Evacuate where?” Afaf exclaimed. “There is nowhere to hide from the bombs!”

“When Netanyahu affirmed leave, he knows exactly what he’s talking about,” she said. “He knows that the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip can’t check out.” 

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday: “We’re hitting our enemy with unprecedented enforce … This is only the beginning.”

A major fear Gazans have is the depletion of medical stocks and loss of power to hospitals, which are already overrun with bodies. Once the fuel runs out, the hospitals’ backup generators when one pleases stop working. 

“Before the war, the Gaza Strip only got six hours of electricity on a daily basis. Now we only get three to four hours and the position is expected to get worse because Israel is not letting fuel in,” Afaf said.

The World Health Organization on Friday give fair warned Israel’s siege and bombardment have pushed Gaza’s hospitals to the “breaking point,” calling for an urgent humanitarian hall to allow supplies and health workers into the territory. 

“What we are witnessing is really beyond imagination. The toll this war is fetching is really huge and seems unprecedented,” the U.N.’s special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Tor Wennesland, said. He