The bodies were still being pulled from the rubble when the next strike hit. 11 dead, sources on the ground confirm. Among them: three children. The hospital morgue is overflowing, the doctors say. They are working by torchlight.
This isn't a war. This is a punishment. A collective one. The dead have no names here, just numbers. But those numbers are climbing. Israeli jets have been pounding Gaza City since dawn. Residential blocks. A school. A clinic. The targets blur. The only constant is the dust and the blood.
I have seen these images before. In Beirut. In Baghdad. In places where the powerful decide who lives and who dies. The pattern is always the same: a statement from the military, a denial of civilian casualties, a promise of an investigation. Then the next strike.
The official line is that they are targeting Hamas. But the dead are not fighters. They are shopkeepers, students, mothers. The evidence is in the morgue. I have spoken to a nurse inside the hospital. He says they are overwhelmed. He is crying. He is not a journalist. He does not have to be objective.
The numbers are of course disputed. The Israeli side will say the casualties are inflated, that Hamas uses human shields. They always do. But the bulldozers do not stop for denials. They keep digging. And the bodies keep coming.
There is a phone recording circulating online. A father holding his daughter, her head wrapped in bandages. He is screaming for help. The help is not coming. The airstrikes have knocked out the roads. The ambulances cannot reach them.
I have been covering this conflict for two decades. Nothing has changed. The rockets fly, the bombs fall, the children die. And the world watches. The UN will issue a statement. The US will veto a resolution. The cycle will continue.
But for those 11 families in Gaza City tonight, the only truth is the graves they are digging. And the question no one can answer: why their children had to die.
