How Israel has escalated Gaza bombing campaign
The Israeli military (IDF) says it has struck "over 150 terror targets" across the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours - an average of one airstrike every ten minutes.
At least 109 people have been killed in the strikes, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, bringing the total number killed this week to 284.
That number may rise further. On Friday morning, the director of Gaza City's Al Shifa hospital told Al Jazeera that more than 250 people had been killed in the previous 36 hours alone.
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The impact of this new bombardment is cataclysmic, as this video of an Israeli airstrike in Jabalia, northern Gaza, verified by Sky News, shows.
Other videos show huge smoke clouds rising from airstrikes on residential neighbourhoods surrounding the city's Indonesian Hospital.
The hospital's director, Dr Marwan al Sultan, told Sky News: "There is a shortage of everything except death."
Among those killed in Jabalia on Friday was 42-year old Yahya Shehab, a nurse for the Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF).
He was killed alongside his wife Tamara, 37, and their five children: Sarah, 18, Anas, 16, Maryam, 14, Aya, 12 and Abdul, 11.
He is survived by his niece Huda, 27, a civil engineer, who lives nearby with her husband Ahmad Ngat, 31, and their two young sons, Mohammed, seven, and Yusuf, four.
Ahmad remembers Yahya as kind and generous, and that he would use his skills as a nurse to treat Mohammed and Yusuf whenever they were sick.
"His kids were great too," Ahmad says. "May God have mercy on them."
Operation Gideon Chariot
An Israeli official said Friday's strikes were preparatory actions in the lead-up to a larger operation.
Earlier this month, Israel's security cabinet approved "Operation Gideon Chariot" - a plan to "capture" all of Gaza and force its entire population to move to a small enclave in the southern Gaza Strip.
At the time, a defence official said the operation would go ahead if no hostage deal was reached by the end of US President Donald Trump's visit to the Middle East. That visit ended on Friday, 16 May.
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Hamas had proposed releasing all hostages in exchange for a permanent end to the war. Last month, Hamas turned down Israel's offer of a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the militant group laying down its weapons and releasing half the living hostages.
Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who sits in the security cabinet, said of Operation Gideon Chariot that Gaza would be "entirely destroyed", and that its population will "leave in great numbers to third countries".
2:12
Ahmad says he is ready to leave Gaza with his family at the earliest opportunity.
"We want to live our lives," he says.
His wife Huda grieving the loss of her uncle Yahya, is seven months pregnant. The family are constantly struggling to find enough food for her and the children, he says.
"Unfortunately, she suffers greatly," Ahmad says. "She developed gestational diabetes during this pregnancy."
Israel has prevented the entry of all food, fuel and water since 2 March. On Monday, a UN-backed report warned that one in five people in Gaza were facing starvation.
Satellite imagery may show new aid hubs
Under new proposals backed by the US, Israel now intends to control the distribution of aid via private military contractors.
The proposals, set to start operating by the end of May, would see aid distributed from militarised compounds in four locations around the Gaza Strip.
Satellite imagery from recent weeks shows Israel has constructed four compounds which could be used for aid distribution.
Construction began in April and was completed by early May.
Three of these are clustered together in the southwest corner of the Gaza Strip, with one in the central Netzarim corridor.
None are located in northern Gaza, where Ahmad and Huda's family live.
The UN has called this a "deliberate attempt to weaponise" aid distribution and has refused to participate.
The planned aid distribution system is being coordinated by a new non-profit, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which was set up in February in Switzerland.
Its board includes a former head of World Central Kitchen, as well as people with close ties to the US military and private military contractors.
Proposals drawn up by the GHF say the four planned aid distribution sites could feed around 1.2 million people, approximately 60% of Gaza's population.
The GHF later requested that Israel establish additional distribution points.
Speaking to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, UN Relief chief Tom Fletcher said the plan "makes starvation a bargaining chip".
"It is cynical sideshow. A deliberate distraction. A fig leaf for further violence and displacement," he said.
Large areas of Gaza have already been razed in recent weeks, including vast tracts of the southern city of Rafah, where many had fled during the war's early stages.
Sky News analysis of satellite imagery shows approximately two-thirds of Rafah's built-up area (66%) has been reduced entirely to rubble, with buildings across much of the rest of the city showing signs of severe damage.
On Thursday, Human Rights Watch executive director Federico Borello said the UK and US have a duty, under the Genocide Convention, to "stop Israeli authorities from starving civilians in Gaza".
He said: "Hearing Israeli officials flaunt plans to squeeze Gaza's two million people into an even tinier area while making the rest of the land uninhabitable should be treated like a five-alarm fire in London, Brussels, Paris, and Washington."
Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said on Friday that Israel's new offensive is intended to secure the release of its hostages. "Our objective is to get them home and get Hamas to relinquish power," he said.
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘Everything we do is under siege': small fundraisers try to provide lifeline in Gaza
Every day, new images come from Gaza that depict the most unimaginable horrors: hunger, despair and murder. It's rare to see a glimmer of hope in this unrelenting suffering, but last week a video posted by Stephanie Shih, of fresh vegetables being purchased from one of the few remaining family farms in the Gaza Strip, provided one. Sadly, the prices were astronomical – sometimes as much as $40 for a few eggplants. Since Israel has stopped almost all food and aid getting into Gaza, prices of what little food has been grown, stockpiled or looted have soared. The fresh vegetables could be purchased thanks to a mutual aid fund run by Shih, an artist based out of New York. Shih has raised over $600,000 since March 2024 from a fund she runs from her Instagram and word of mouth. Half of the money goes to a photojournalist in Gaza with a history of community work, who helps organise distributions of cooked food, produce, water, tents, cloth and cash. 'He's able to leverage his longstanding relationships with local vendors to get decent deals on what little product is available in the markets, which is then distributed for free to families who cannot afford it,' Shih said. The funds enabled him to buy the vegetables and pass them on to other families. The other half of the money is given to around 30 families in Gaza that Shih has developed close relationships with since 2024. Shih is one of a number of individuals and groups based in the US who have set up uncertified and unofficial mutual aid funds for people in Gaza. The funds solicit donations from all over the world. Some are working with Palestinians in Gaza to organise complex distribution networks, others are simply wiring money directly to trusted individuals in Gaza to distribute. Just this week, Reviving Gaza, a mutual aid group founded by three displaced Gazan siblings, posted videos of 1,500 loaves of fresh bread being baked with flour secured by their group. This kind of distribution is often uneven and not nearly enough to sustain the population of Gaza. The amount they can raise is also limited by personal networks and social media followers. Yet for people living under the most unimaginably horrific conditions, these donations can be a lifeline. Since the beginning of the war, aid has been severely restricted – only a small number of aid trucks are allowed into Gaza and what's allowed in is heavily controlled by Israel. But things got considerably worse in March, when Israel enacted a total blockade on all food, aid and medicine into Gaza. The small amount of aid still being distributed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a USand Israeli-backed group, comes with great risk: Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians at its food distribution sites since May. Earlier this month more than 100 charities wrote an open letter to say that they were seeing Palestinians, including their own colleagues, wasting away as famine grips Gaza. The letter blamed Israeli restrictions on, and 'massacres' at, aid distribution points. Israel's foreign ministry says it is now allowing in about 70 aid trucks a day – well below the 500 to 600 trucks the UN says are needed and that entered daily during a six-week ceasefire earlier this year. 'On a given day when a NGO has to shut down highly visible operations because of military threats, fundraisers like ours can still operate,' says Shih. 'But those NGOs could be up the very next day serving more people than our small team could handle. NGOs have more money and resources but are also bound by international bureaucracy and political tensions. Mutual aid groups are more nimble, have less overhead and are able to distribute moderate amounts of aid quickly.' While some mutual aid funds are being run by individuals like Shih, others are small collectives that focus on certain kinds of aid – like Water is Life, which sources water from wells in northern Gaza and, with the help of donations, pays for trucks to distribute it around the strip. Mutual Aid Funds says that in the past few weeks interest and donations have soared as more images of starvation and Israeli violence reach western media. Grassroots Gaza is a fund run by a large number of Palestinians who now live abroad. 'Donations are a lifeline in these catastrophic times,' said their cofounding member, who asked not to be named. 'For example, we've been sending clean water trucks to al-Naser in north Gaza for months. And we chose this area precisely because it's a residential neighborhood, not a camp or UN school, and is often overlooked by large NGOs and international aid initiatives.' Notably, these funds use existing networks and wire transfers to get money to Gaza, avoiding platforms like GoFundMe which has frozen or returned millions of dollars raised on its platform meant to reach Gaza. But once money reaches Gaza, some brokers are charging 40% fees to get cash. These fees are a big part of the reason people can't afford food. Many merchants used to accept digital transfers, but no longer. Virtual money is losing value because it has to be converted to cash at some point. Food prices are changing constantly, but Tamar Glezerman, who fundraises via Venmo with the help of a friend in Gaza, says prices last week were 1,100 shekels ($324) for 10kg of flour, 200 shekels ($59) for Canned sardines and 54 shekels ($15) for wet wipes. That's not to say mutual aid groups can account that every dollar they raise is spent in the most effective way. Grassroots Gaza acknowledges the emergence of 'black markets, skyrocketing prices, and exploitative merchants' but says that it is not the fault of those sending money and 'is directly linked to and engineered by the ongoing genocidal war'. Many financial operators also saddle huge surcharges on money being sent to Gaza. 'Everything we do is carried out and organized under siege, bombardment, starvation, and abandonment by the international community and neighboring countries. Nothing about this moment is perfect, and yet we continue to provide rooted in care, accountability, and love to our people,' said the group's spokesperson. Yesterday, as she was about to send more money, Shih got a heartbreaking reply from one of the families she regularly donates to: 'I think there is no need for that. We will not be able to use this money for anything. The situation is very bad and the prices are very high. This is the last thing I ever expected to say in my life.' Shih says she will continue to send funds to the family, but the only way to help every Palestinian in Gaza is with an immediate ceasefire and open borders. 'If there was enough food to feed the people of Gaza, there would be no black market. Flour didn't cost 120 shekels a kilo before the genocide. Israel is manufacturing the starvation of Gaza and then pointing to people's desperation as proof of their depravity, but the depravity is Israel's alone.'
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘Everything we do is under siege': small fundraisers try to provide lifeline in Gaza
Every day, new images come from Gaza that depict the most unimaginable horrors: hunger, despair and murder. It's rare to see a glimmer of hope in this unrelenting suffering, but last week a video posted by Stephanie Shih, of fresh vegetables being purchased from one of the few remaining family farms in the Gaza Strip, provided one. Sadly, the prices were astronomical – sometimes as much as $40 for a few eggplants. Since Israel has stopped almost all food and aid getting into Gaza, prices of what little food has been grown, stockpiled or looted have soared. The fresh vegetables could be purchased thanks to a mutual aid fund run by Shih, an artist based out of New York. Shih has raised over $600,000 since March 2024 from a fund she runs from her Instagram and word of mouth. Half of the money goes to a photojournalist in Gaza with a history of community work, who helps organise distributions of cooked food, produce, water, tents, cloth and cash. 'He's able to leverage his longstanding relationships with local vendors to get decent deals on what little product is available in the markets, which is then distributed for free to families who cannot afford it,' Shih said. The funds enabled him to buy the vegetables and pass them on to other families. The other half of the money is given to around 30 families in Gaza that Shih has developed close relationships with since 2024. Shih is one of a number of individuals and groups based in the US who have set up uncertified and unofficial mutual aid funds for people in Gaza. The funds solicit donations from all over the world. Some are working with Palestinians in Gaza to organise complex distribution networks, others are simply wiring money directly to trusted individuals in Gaza to distribute. Just this week, Reviving Gaza, a mutual aid group founded by three displaced Gazan siblings, posted videos of 1,500 loaves of fresh bread being baked with flour secured by their group. This kind of distribution is often uneven and not nearly enough to sustain the population of Gaza. The amount they can raise is also limited by personal networks and social media followers. Yet for people living under the most unimaginably horrific conditions, these donations can be a lifeline. Since the beginning of the war, aid has been severely restricted – only a small number of aid trucks are allowed into Gaza and what's allowed in is heavily controlled by Israel. But things got considerably worse in March, when Israel enacted a total blockade on all food, aid and medicine into Gaza. The small amount of aid still being distributed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a USand Israeli-backed group, comes with great risk: Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians at its food distribution sites since May. Earlier this month more than 100 charities wrote an open letter to say that they were seeing Palestinians, including their own colleagues, wasting away as famine grips Gaza. The letter blamed Israeli restrictions on, and 'massacres' at, aid distribution points. Israel's foreign ministry says it is now allowing in about 70 aid trucks a day – well below the 500 to 600 trucks the UN says are needed and that entered daily during a six-week ceasefire earlier this year. 'On a given day when a NGO has to shut down highly visible operations because of military threats, fundraisers like ours can still operate,' says Shih. 'But those NGOs could be up the very next day serving more people than our small team could handle. NGOs have more money and resources but are also bound by international bureaucracy and political tensions. Mutual aid groups are more nimble, have less overhead and are able to distribute moderate amounts of aid quickly.' While some mutual aid funds are being run by individuals like Shih, others are small collectives that focus on certain kinds of aid – like Water is Life, which sources water from wells in northern Gaza and, with the help of donations, pays for trucks to distribute it around the strip. Mutual Aid Funds says that in the past few weeks interest and donations have soared as more images of starvation and Israeli violence reach western media. Grassroots Gaza is a fund run by a large number of Palestinians who now live abroad. 'Donations are a lifeline in these catastrophic times,' said their cofounding member, who asked not to be named. 'For example, we've been sending clean water trucks to al-Naser in north Gaza for months. And we chose this area precisely because it's a residential neighborhood, not a camp or UN school, and is often overlooked by large NGOs and international aid initiatives.' Notably, these funds use existing networks and wire transfers to get money to Gaza, avoiding platforms like GoFundMe which has frozen or returned millions of dollars raised on its platform meant to reach Gaza. But once money reaches Gaza, some brokers are charging 40% fees to get cash. These fees are a big part of the reason people can't afford food. Many merchants used to accept digital transfers, but no longer. Virtual money is losing value because it has to be converted to cash at some point. Food prices are changing constantly, but Tamar Glezerman, who fundraises via Venmo with the help of a friend in Gaza, says prices last week were 1,100 shekels ($324) for 10kg of flour, 200 shekels ($59) for Canned sardines and 54 shekels ($15) for wet wipes. That's not to say mutual aid groups can account that every dollar they raise is spent in the most effective way. Grassroots Gaza acknowledges the emergence of 'black markets, skyrocketing prices, and exploitative merchants' but says that it is not the fault of those sending money and 'is directly linked to and engineered by the ongoing genocidal war'. Many financial operators also saddle huge surcharges on money being sent to Gaza. 'Everything we do is carried out and organized under siege, bombardment, starvation, and abandonment by the international community and neighboring countries. Nothing about this moment is perfect, and yet we continue to provide rooted in care, accountability, and love to our people,' said the group's spokesperson. Yesterday, as she was about to send more money, Shih got a heartbreaking reply from one of the families she regularly donates to: 'I think there is no need for that. We will not be able to use this money for anything. The situation is very bad and the prices are very high. This is the last thing I ever expected to say in my life.' Shih says she will continue to send funds to the family, but the only way to help every Palestinian in Gaza is with an immediate ceasefire and open borders. 'If there was enough food to feed the people of Gaza, there would be no black market. Flour didn't cost 120 shekels a kilo before the genocide. Israel is manufacturing the starvation of Gaza and then pointing to people's desperation as proof of their depravity, but the depravity is Israel's alone.'
The Guardian
15 hours ago
- The Guardian
The Crunch: how desperate Palestinians are struggling to find food and aid in Gaza
Hello and welcome to another edition of The Crunch! More Palestinians died of starvation in the past week than in the preceding 21 months, prompting widespread condemnation of Israel's actions. As a result, much of the media's focus has been on the desperate suffering of the Palestinians. So we are doing something slightly different in this newsletter: a spotlight on data-visualisation about how people in Gaza are being killed and injured while seeking aid. There's also a collection of other things that caught our eye this fortnight towards the end of the newsletter. The four aid distribution sites across Gaza run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) are only open for a few minutes a day – the Saudi site was open for an average of 11 minutes in June. Our colleagues in the UK put together this visual explainer on 'how aid points in Gaza became death traps'. This chart shows the time between aid sites opening and closing through June and July: Palestinians in Gaza have to queue and walk kilometres – through evacuation zones that civilians have been told to leave – to reach aid sites. The piece also includes maps if, like us, you are having trouble getting your head around this geography. 2. Average daily calories in Gaza Our colleague Mona Chalabi also posted this devastating graphic on Instagram comparing the average calories consumed by someone in Gaza in May, to the daily recommended amount: We've often featured Mona's spectacular work, including this one on Gaza's population as 100 people, and the population density of bombed cities. 3. Aid sites and access routes The Economist also covered the GHF aid sites ($), with a series of excellent maps and satellite images showing the long walks and the huge crowds forming at checkpoints. Among other things, this really drives home the distances that families are forced to travel to get aid. 4. Huge crowds for aid convoy Sign up to The Crunch Our data journalists showcase the most important charts and dataviz from the Guardian and around the web, free every fortnight after newsletter promotion To give more context around the scale of the desperation for aid, the New York Times reports on a satellite image of huge crowds gathering around aid trucks taken in Gaza last week: Not a lot is known about where these trucks were going or what they were carrying. The NYT has also published a map showing which countries have already recognised a Palestinian state. 5. Environmental devastation in Gaza Environmental devastation is an under-reported aspect of the destruction in Gaza. Bloomberg analysis of satellite data has found nearly 350 sites where waste has been piling up since the conflict began. This map shows Souk Feras, which was a market before the conflict began but now holds an estimated 200,000 metric tons of rubbish: The Bloomberg team estimates that new garbage sites cover more than 1 sq kilometre, about 60% of the areas are close to tents, and 15% are near water, sanitation or other 'hygiene sites'. Read (and see) more here. We published this One Big Chart on increasing student debt held by younger Australians The Pudding launched an amazing project to make signs and other text in New York City streets searchable The Australian Bureau of Statistics made a bar chart about all the other charts they've made this year We couldn't stop playing with the Mac emulators in this story about Mac settings (we're counting this as data-vis as you can actually manipulate spreadsheets in some of the emulated computers) Reuters have an illustrated explainer of the crash of Air India flight 171 If you would like to receive The Crunch to your email inbox every fortnight, sign up here.
