Sayed Abu Tahoun kneels, clutching the limp body of his daughter, Dalia, killed by Israeli tank fire outside their home in Gaza City.
His scream echoes through the hospital’s crowded corridors. He stares into her lifeless eyes, then wails again, before pulling her close in a desperate embrace on the floor of Al-Shifa Hospital.
This scene and others were captured in videos by journalists in Gaza and verified by NBC News on Saturday — 24 hours after Israel said it had begun the “initial stages” of its assault on Gaza City.
Israel has vowed to take control of the largest city in the famine-gripped enclave, home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said Sunday that Israel had killed Hamas spokesperson Abu Obeida in Gaza — a claim Hamas has not confirmed — vowing that "many more of his partners in crime" would meet the same fate.
On Aug. 22, Katz said the IDF would “open the gates of hell” on Gaza City until Hamas accepted Israel’s conditions for ending the conflict, including surrendering all hostages and laying down its arms.
By Saturday, Israel’s latest assault had rained down on a city already buckling under famine, disease and displacement.
In footage from western Gaza City, a boy covered in gray dust lay dead from another strike, blood leaking from a crater in his skull.
At a bakery hit in a separate Israeli bombardment, another video showed rescuers carrying away child after child from the carnage.
Israeli strikes killed at least 70 people across the strip on Saturday, 47 of them in Gaza City alone, Dr. Khalil Al-Daqran, spokesman for Gaza’s Health Ministry, told NBC News.
The Israeli military said it had struck a “key Hamas terrorist” in Saturday’s strikes on Gaza City and that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”
When pressed for additional details on the strike, the Israeli Defense Forces did not answer questions from NBC News.
The assault on Gaza City, declared a “dangerous combat zone” by Israel, is expected to displace hundreds of thousands and has drawn global condemnation amid warnings that it could deepen the humanitarian catastrophe in the famine-stricken enclave.
UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, said Friday that around 1 million people could be forcibly displaced again. The International Red Cross warned Saturday that evacuating the city under bombardment would be “impossible.”
Israel has told civilians to leave for the south of the Palestinian enclave.
Seeking refuge, Palestinians face airstrikes as well as increasing deprivation, following a declaration of famine in northern Gaza earlier in August, including Gaza City, by the world’s leading authority on hunger.
Under these conditions, disease is also a threat.
A virus causing high fever, joint pain and diarrhea is spreading rapidly in Gaza, Dr. Muhammad Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa Medical Complex, told NBC News on Thursday.
He said immunodeficiency resulting from malnutrition, as well as overcrowding and a lack of clean water and cleaning materials, were causing the virus to spread.
After Israel carried out heavy strikes in the area on Friday, residents, many of whom have been displaced several times during the war, started to flee. As tanks advanced in several areas, Gaza City’s streets were crowded with newly displaced families by the afternoon.
Suleiman al-Hissi, 55, hauled what little he owned as his eight children clustered around him. “Enough!” he cried. “Stop this war! Where is the mercy? Where is the humanity?”
On Sunday, an aid flotilla carrying activists — including Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg — set sail from Barcelona, aiming to breach Israel’s naval blockade and deliver humanitarian supplies.
At an earlier newspress conference, Thunberg accused Israel of “genocide, mass-slaughter,” and said Palestinians were being “deliberately deprived of the very basic means to survive.”
Israel denies committing genocide.
It has already intercepted two flotillas this summer, one carrying Thunberg, detaining the passengers in Israel before expelling them.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Friday that the IDF had recovered the remains of two hostages from the Gaza Strip in a military operation this week.
It announced the retrieval of Ilan Weiss’ body along with the remains of another hostage, whose identity is now known to be that of Idan Shtivi but had not been disclosed at the time.
