By IRNA,
Gaza City : As Israel continues with air raids on Gaza Strip for a third day, heavy Israeli armour was moved close to the Gaza border.
Israel was determined to “change realities” in Gaza, amid expectations it might launch a ground invasion, Israeli radio said quoting FM Tzipi Livni.
Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas, told reporters that Israel had started a “war” but that it would not be able to choose how it would end.
Across Gaza, families huddled indoors as Israeli jets streaked overhead. Residents said that there were long blackouts and that they had no cooking gas.
Some ventured out to receive bread rations at bakeries or to brave the streets to claim their dead at the hospitals.
There were few mass funerals; rather, families buried the victims in small ceremonies.
At Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, women wailed as they searched for relatives among bodies that lay strewn on the hospital floor.
One doctor said that given the dearth of facilities, not much could be done for the seriously wounded, and that it was “better to be brought in dead.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross appealed for urgent humanitarian assistance, including medical supplies, to be allowed to enter Gaza.
UN Relief Works Agency said that Gaza aid operation is virtually impossible due to Israeli blockade on Gaza.
Christopher Gunness from UNRWA told reporters that it is virtually impossible to run or to do large scale planning for such a humanitarian operation.
“We feed more than 750,000 people in Gaza. The World Food Program feeds over 200,000 people in Gaza. We do cash distributions to 94,000 people. To conduct an aid operation of this scale, given the drip drip drip, on and off policy of supplies into Gaza, it’s become virtually impossible.”