A barrage of Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday crushed multiple residential buildings and buried families under rubble, as health officials in the besieged territory reported hundreds killed in the past day and the closure of medical facilities because of bomb damage and a lack of power.
Israel said Tuesday it had launched 400 airstrikes over the past day, killing Hamas commanders, hitting militants as they were preparing to launch rockets into Israel and striking command centers and a Hamas tunnel shaft. The previous day, Israel reported 320 strikes. Witnesses and health officials said many of the airstrikes hit residential buildings, some of them in southern Gaza where Israel had told civilians to take shelter.
Civil defense teams and civilians conduct search and rescue operations at the scene following an Israeli airstrike on Nuseirat Camp in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on Oct. 24, 2023. In Gaza City, at least 19 people were killed when an airstrike hit the house of the Bahloul family, according to survivors, who said dozens more people remained buried. Workers pulled at least two children out of the collapsed building. Nearby, the legs of a dead woman and another person, both still half buried, dangled out of the wreckage.
The rising toll has made it hard for Palestinians to bury the huge numbers of dead, with cemeteries being forced to excavate and reuse old plots and bury up to five bodies in one grave.Israeli UFC fighter Natan Levy says he had just flown to Israel a few days before the attacks by Hamas. Levy said he just wanted to spend time with family but his plans soon changed, going into survival mode. LiveNOW's Carel Lajara spoke with Levy about his experience visiting Israel in the middle of a war.
Appearing weak in a wheelchair and speaking softly, 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz told reporters Tuesday that the militants beat her with sticks, bruising her ribs and making it hard to breathe as they kidnapped her. They drove her into Gaza, then forced her to walk several kilometers on wet ground to reach a network of tunnels that looked like a spider web, she said.