Palestinians Recount Night 'Like Hell' After Israel Pounds Gaza City

Residents of Gaza City on Wednesday described an infernal night of relentless Israeli aerial and artillery attacks preceding the official launch of what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the "decisive stage" of the 698-day assault and siege on the embattled strip.

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) warplanes, drones, and artillery unleashed a ferocious wave of attacks on Gaza's largest city Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning, killing dozens of Palestinians and obliterating neighborhoods including Sheikh Radwan, where residents described their utter terror as drones dropped incendiary bombs and panicked families attempted to flee.

Gaza officials said later on Wednesday that at least 113 Palestinians were killed in the strip over the past 24 hours.

"Gaza is being erased," Hadi, a 27-year-old from Sheikh Radwan, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. "Artillery everywhere, airstrikes everywhere, helicopters everywhere. Even quadcopters are firing at people in the streets, like they are being hunted down. No one knows where to go. We are fleeing to the unknown."

Journalist Mohammed Haniya posted on social media: "The bloody, explosive, Earth-shaking night of Gaza! How did we survive this morning? I can't believe it."

"It was a scorching night of fire from every side, from the explosions, to the dropping of incendiary bombs over our heads, to the aerial and artillery bombardment," he added. "We can't believe how we survived!"

Madleen Abu Saif, a 29-year-old Gaza City resident, told the Emirati newspaper The National that "it was very difficult; the shelling came with all kinds of weapons from quadcopters, tanks, warplanes—from everywhere. It was like hell."

"We tried to stay away from the windows and the street, and we stayed close to the house door so that we could evacuate immediately if necessary," she added.

Around 60,000-80,000 of the approximately 1 million Palestinians in Gaza City are believed to have fled over the past 72 hours. IDF officials—who are proven frequent liars—claimed Wednesday that Hamas, whose political arm rules Gaza and whose militant wing led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, is blocking civilians from leaving.

Hadi told Haaretz that "the war machines are closing in, but there's no official declaration of any invasion. Still, the feeling is that the occupation of Gaza has already begun."

That declaration came Wednesday morning, as IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir conducted a field visit to Gaza and said that Operation Gideon's Chariots 2—the campaign to conquer, occupy, and ethnically cleanse the strip—had officially begun.

"We will continue operating against Hamas' main strongholds until its defeat; we are instilling in them a sense of being constantly pursued everywhere," Zamir vowed.

The Qassam Brigades, Hamas' armed wing, responded by announcing a series of operations it called "Moses' Staff." Qassam Brigades said its fighters blasted an IDF bulldozer with a rocket near Salah al-Din Mosque in al-Zaytoun and fired mortar shells at Israeli troops gathered at Haj Fadel.

Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity—and IDF commanders told reservists Wednesday that the assault on Gaza was entering its "decisive stage."

More than 365 of the 60,000 IDF reservists being mobilized to invade Gaza said Tuesday that they would not report for duty.

"We refuse to take part in Netanyahu's illegal war, and we see it as a patriotic duty to refuse and to demand accountability from our leaders," IDF reservist Max Kresch explained at a press conference.

"Netanyahu's ongoing war of aggression needlessly puts our own hostages in danger, and has wreaked havoc on the fabric of Israeli society, while at the same time killing, maiming, and starving an entire population of Gazan civilians," Kresch added.

Israel's nearly 23-month assault and siege on Gaza—which is the subject of an ongoing International Court of Justice genocide case—has left more than 235,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing and hundreds of thousands of others starving in what is now officially an Integrated Food Security Phase Classification-designated famine that has killed at least hundreds of people.