<div style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">"Where do we go? Is there a safe place left in this neighbourhood, which was so quiet and beautiful?" residents of an apartment block in Rimal asked me, with heavy sarcasm.</span><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I had just spent the most difficult seven hours of my life inside there, as Israeli warplanes carried another wave of air strikes in retaliation for the Palestinian militant group's unprecedented assault on southern Israel from the Gaza Strip on Saturday.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Israeli strikes also caused significant damage to dozens of residential buildings, the offices of telecommunications companies, and faculty buildings of the Islamic University of Gaza.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Terrifying explosions shook the area throughout Monday night. Children were screaming and nobody had a moment's sleep.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It was a night that the residents of Rimal - Gaza City's wealthiest neighbourhood and usually its quietest - will not forget for a long time.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As dawn broke on Tuesday, the intensity of the strikes decreased and people discovered the extent of the destruction. The south-western neighbourhood's infrastructure was severely damaged and most roads leading to it were cut off.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As I drove around it felt as if there had been an earthquake. There was rubble, shattered glass and severed wiring everywhere. Such was the devastation that I did not recognise some of the buildings that I passed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I lost everything. My apartment, where my five children lived, was here in this building. My grocery shop below the building was destroyed," Mohammed Abu al-Kass told me while carrying his daughter Shahd in the street.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Where do we go? We have become homeless. There is no shelter for us anymore or work."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Are my house and my grocery shop a military target, Israel?" he added, accusing the Israeli military of lying when it says it does not target civilians.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Palestinian health ministry said that about 300 people, two thirds of them civilians, were killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza on Monday. It was the deadliest day there for many years.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At least 15 people were killed in the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp, north-east of Gaza City, in the afternoon. The Israeli military said it targeted the home of a Hamas commander. But many people at a nearby market or in neighbouring houses were killed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Humanitarian crisis deepens</div><div style="text-align: justify;">The overall death toll in Gaza since Saturday now stands at 900, including 260 children, according to the health ministry. Another 4,500 people have been injured.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The already dire humanitarian crisis in this tiny, overcrowded territory also deepens.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Its 2.2 million residents are running out of food, fuel, electricity and water, after Israel's government ordered a "complete siege" and cut off all of Gaza's supplies in response to Hamas's attack.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Saturday's unexpected assault has killed 1,000 people on the Israeli side, and between 100 and 150 hostages have been taken across the border into Gaza by the militants.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Can you imagine that we are living without power or water in the 21st Century? My baby has run out of nappies and there is only half a bottle of milk left," said Waad al-Mughrabi as she looked at the destroyed building next to her home in Rimal.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Was it my child who attacked Israel?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Outside Gaza's largest supermarket, which had opened for the first time since Saturday, dozens of people were queuing in front of a small back door. They were hoping to buy whatever provisions they could, fearful that the fighting will last a long time.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Most of Gaza's fresh vegetables and fruits are grown in the south of the territory, and the severe fuel shortage means that transporting them to the north will become increasingly difficult. BBC</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>