Doctors in Gaza described scenes of “armageddon” as they struggled to tend to hundreds of dead and wounded, including children with severed limbs, as Israel launched some of its deadliest-ever strikes, shattering the relative calm of a ceasefire.

The ferocious bombardment came after Israel had imposed a two-week blockade on aid, supplies, and electricity, crippling the emergency responses. It pounded swathes of the strip early Tuesday morning, bringing an already struggling healthcare system to its knees.

Palestinian health officials said that in just a few hours alone, over 400 people had been killed, the vast majority women and children.
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On Tuesday the Israeli government broke the ceasefire and began bombing Gaza once again. The attacks targeted a number of residential at killed at least 400 people, most of them children.

Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said that Al-Ahli Hospital had been overwhelmed with mass casualties and that entire families were arriving dead.

“Last night’s attacks prove again that there is no safe place across Gaza,” said Mahmoud. “People had gone back to bombed homes and evacuation centers, thinking it was going to be safe due to the ceasefire, but that was not the case. They were killed inside these very places.”

“Israeli forces have signed a death warrant for Palestinian children in Gaza as they carry out nonstop attacks, continue to destroy civilian infrastructure, and prevent any humanitarian aid from reaching Palestinians in need,” said Defense for Children Palestine’s Ayed Abu Eqtaish in a statement. “This is nothing short of genocide.”

Israeli officials say that the country was given permission by the Trump administration to attack Gaza. “All those who seek to terrorize not just Israel but also the United States of America, will see a price to pay,” said White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt on Fox News. “All hell will break loose.”

“I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job, not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don’t do as I say,” Trump posted to Truth Social.

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Dr Muhammad Abuafash, director of Palestinian Medical Relief, who rushed to treat those at al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, said the few medics available struggled to decide who to treat first, as patients and bloodied bodies intermingled on the floor.

“The vast majority of the wounded are children. We’re talking about large numbers of children with severed limbs,” he said in desperation, adding that emergency workers were still pulling the wounded and the dead out from under the rubble.

“There are not enough medical facilities or supplies, nor are there enough medical personnel. The doctors deal with injuries without preference, unfortunately.”

Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a paediatric intensive care physician working with Medical Aid for Palestinians inside Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, described being woken before dawn by an “airstrike frenzy.”

“The ER was just chaos, patients everywhere on the floor,” she said in a voice recording, adding that the paediatric intensive area unit beds were full and in the first couple of hours, more than 70 bodies were brought in and taken immediately to the morgue.

“There were probably three men, and the rest were all children, women, the elderly – it was everybody caught in their sleep, still wrapped in their blankets. Terrifying, a level of horror and evil that is hard to articulate. It felt like armageddon.”

Dr Mohammad Qishta, a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) emergency doctor at Nasser Hospital, said the emergency department was “disastrous.”

“We received no less than 400 cases in less than two hours. We received many bodies and parts of bodies, most of them children and women,” he continued.

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At our site, Tareq Hajjaj reported on a child who watched their mother burn to death before dying himself:

On Tuesday night, in the Qarara area east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, brothers Muhammad and Ibrahim Hamidi decided to take their children and flee to a less dangerous location east of the city. The sound of heavy gunfire from tanks stationed near their home after a brutal night of nonstop shelling and bombardment pushed them to head toward the Mawasi area of Khan Younis, the same coastal stretch of land that had served as a so-called “safe zone” throughout the war.

The brothers arrived and set up their tents. In the middle of the night, Muhammad heard the sound of bombing. He emerged from his tent, hundreds of meters away from his brother Ibrahim’s. He was rushing toward the sound of the bombs to help people who had been hit — a common sight in Gaza — but he didn’t expect that the bombed tent would belong to his brother.

“I ran out, thinking the bombing might have targeted a family we know. When I arrived, I found my brother lying on the ground, covered in blood, and his wife holding their child, both of them on fire,” Muhammad Hamidi told Mondoweiss. “My nephew was lying on the ground, injured in his head and back, and looking at his mother. She was engulfed in flames with his younger baby brother. Then my nephew turned his head toward his father, who was bleeding after the missile struck his head.”

With deep sadness, Muhammad says that in his final moments, his three-year-old nephew watched his mother and brother burn. “The child was helpless,” he said.

Sources:

mondoweiss.net/2025/03/the-shi…

independent.co.uk/news/world/m…

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