CAIRO/GAZA: Tens of thousands of newly displaced Gazans huddled under tarpaulins on Friday in the centre of the Palestinian enclave after fleeing an Israeli tank offensive, while warplanes attacking the south flattened homes and buried families as they slept.
Israel is closing the year with new assaults in central and southern Gaza, unleashing a fresh exodus of people already driven from other areas, in what Defence Minister Yoav Gallant called an essential stage of its mission to destroy Hamas.
Israeli forces have laid much of the Gaza Strip to waste. Nearly all its 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes at least once, and many are now fleeing for the third or fourth time.
Gaza health authorities said 187 more Palestinians were confirmed killed in Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours, raising the toll to 21,507 - about 1 per cent of Gaza's population - with thousands more bodies feared unrecovered in the ruins.
In the south of the Gaza Strip in Rafah, Reuters journalists at the scene of one air strike that obliterated a building saw the head of a buried toddler sticking out of the rubble.
The child screamed as a rescue worker shielded his head with a hand, while another swung a sledgehammer at a chisel, trying to break up a slab of concrete to free him.
Neighbour Sanad Abu Tabet said the two-storey house had been crowded with displaced people. After morning broke, relatives came to collect the dead wrapped up in white shrouds. A man peeled away the cloth to stroke the face of a dead child.
Tens of thousands of Gazans are fleeing the crowded central districts of Bureij, Maghazi and Nusseirat, ordered out by Israeli forces whose tanks advanced from the north and east.
Most have made their way south or west to the already overwhelmed city of Deir al Balah, pitching makeshift tents made from sheets of plastic on whatever open ground they could find.
"We suffered a lot. We had the whole night without shelter, under rain and it was cold, we were with our kids and elderly women," said Um Hamdi, a woman cooking porridge over an open woodfire, surrounded by children.
Nearby, grey-bearded Abdel Nasser Awadallah stood inside a wooden frame set up to be wrapped in plastic to make a tent, and spoke of the family he had lost.
"I buried my children, a child 16-years-old, another one aged 18. Something I really can't believe, I buried my children at 6 am while their bodies were still warm. Also my nephew he was 2-years-old, I buried him, I buried my wife," he said. "I never thought in my life that I will bury my children, I thought they would bury me."
Gaza is almost entirely reliant on food, fuel and medical supplies from the outside, and Israel has shut off all access apart from at the southern edge.
International bodies say supplies being let in through Israeli inspections are a small fraction of the enclave's vast needs.
Israel's Western allies, led by Washington, have defended its right to protect itself by retaliating against Hamas, but have grown increasingly alarmed by the high death toll and humanitarian devastation. Efforts by mediators Egypt and Qatar to negotiate a ceasefire have so far been fruitless since a week-long truce collapsed at the end of November. - Reuters
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