Over the past 36 hours, the Israeli army has escalated its attacks across the Gaza Strip, killing at least 250 Palestinians and wounding hundreds, according to local health officials. The wave of air and artillery strikes has drawn comparisons from residents to the earliest and most brutal days of the war.

In the southern city of Khan Younis, the courtyard of the European Gaza Hospital came under heavy bombardment on the evening of May 13. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, 28 Palestinians were killed and dozens were wounded in the attack. Among them were patients, medical personnel, and civil defense and ambulance crews who were attempting to rescue the injured before being hit again by additional rounds of fire. The hospital has since been rendered completely out of service.

Sumaya Al-Hajj, 42, was visiting her mother, who had undergone leg surgery at the hospital, when the bombing started. “In mere seconds, dozens of heavy missiles and shells rained down from all directions,” Al-Hajj told +972. “The terrifying sounds and shaking brought back memories of the war’s early days, when the bombing was constant and merciless.”

Frozen in fear, Al-Hajj stood helpless by the door of her mother’s room. “I didn’t know what to do. Should I flee or stay? Take my mother or leave her? I couldn’t even look out the window — shrapnel, smoke, and black dust were flying everywhere,” she said. “I don’t remember how long the terror lasted, but there was screaming everywhere, and the injured and the dead were lying on the ground. No one could help them. The fear paralyzed everyone.”

After more than four hours, Al-Hajj finally managed to escape the hospital with her mother. “We couldn’t leave at first. They were targeting anyone who moved, either with shelling or sniper fire from quadcopters. They’d hit the same place multiple times,” she recalled. “We only moved when others started fleeing. We risked our lives, but we couldn’t stay. We were afraid the hospital buildings would be targeted directly, or that shrapnel would hit us.”

Despite her mother’s poor health, Al-Hajj was able to walk her out on foot. “My brother and I walked a long distance with her. She was in pain, and there was no transportation. After a long walk, we found a cart pulled by an animal and used it to take our mother to Nasser Hospital [in Khan Younis] to continue her treatment.”

Al-Hajj added that what she experienced will haunt her forever. “Everyone was fleeing with fear in their eyes,” she said. “I’ve never lived through such horrors during any war.”

As’ad Al-Amour, 35, was returning home after buying some vegetables from stalls in front of the European Hospital when the bombings began. “People started screaming and running madly, trying to escape. No one could comprehend what was happening,” he told +972. “It was as if the earth split open and swallowed people. Bodies were scattered all around.

“Even after the bombing subsided, drones continued to target anyone who was alive or trying to rescue others,” he added. “We lived through the horrors of the Day of Judgment. All we saw was fire, smoke, and death.”

After surviving the bombing, Al-Amour wanted to return home to his family but could hardly move. “The bag [filled with vegetables] fell from my hands, I don’t even know where it went,” he said. “I thought about my family and their safety, but I ran in the opposite direction from my house. I could only think of surviving.”

According to Al-Amour, the bombardment didn’t subside even after the assault on the hospital courtyard. “We haven’t been able to sleep for two days. Day and night, there’s constant shelling, whether from aircraft or artillery,” he said. “I thought of leaving, but where would I go? I spoke with friends in different parts of Khan Younis, and they’re all experiencing the same. There’s no safe place. It feels like the war has started all over again.”

In a joint statement with the Shin Bet security service, the Israeli military claimed its bombing of the European Hospital — coming less than 24 hours after an attack on Nasser Hospital that killed journalist Hassan Aslih — was a “precise strike” targeting a Hamas “command and control center.” Israeli media later reported that the intended target was Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar. However, a video released by the military, purportedly showing “underground terrorist infrastructure” revealed by the strike, mistakenly highlighted a nearby school building rather than the hospital itself as the site of the attack.

‘We’re starving. We’re exhausted. We’re terrified’

In the city of Jabalia and its adjacent refugee camp, dozens of civilians — mostly women and children — were killed or injured beneath the rubble of their homes, which were flattened in a series of Israeli airstrikes.

Jamal Hammad, a resident of the city’s Zamo neighborhood, hasn’t slept in over 24 hours. Alongside his wife and six children, the 38-year-old has spent the past day gripped by fear, as relentless Israeli bombings shook their home.

Desperate to understand what was happening, Hammad stepped out into the street to speak with neighbors in the early hours of Friday morning. That’s when the artillery shelling began. “It was intense and random,” he recalled in an interview with +972. “Dozens of dead people. Carnage. Some bodies had no heads. Women, children, and young people were lying on the ground, screaming for help.”

When Hammad and others called for an ambulance, they were told it was too dangerous for paramedics to enter the area. So he and several neighbors began carrying the wounded on foot, walking a kilometer to where the only two available ambulances were stationed.

After about an hour, Hammad’s body gave out. “I saw an old woman lying injured on the ground, begging me to help her,” he said. “But I couldn’t carry her. My body was shaking — from fear and the horror of what I’d seen.”

During that time, Hammad was deeply worried about his 16-year-old daughter, Nagham, who suffers from multiple chronic illnesses, including a severe gluten intolerance. When she’s frightened, her blood pressure can drop dramatically, and she sometimes loses consciousness or becomes temporarily paralyzed, a reaction that has worsened since the war began.

When he rushed back to his home to help evacuate his family, he realized he couldn’t carry Nagham alone. He called his cousin, Saeed, to help. In the chaos, they fled without any belongings — just one of dozens of families trying to escape northern Gaza under ongoing heavy bombardment.

As they were evacuating, Hammad’s 27-year-old cousin Afnan was hit by shrapnel. “She was bleeding, and we could barely carry her with the bombing all around us,” he said.

Hammad and his family had no destination. In the end, they made the painful decision to split up: one group headed toward a slightly calmer area in Jabalia, while Hammad and Nagham took refuge in Sheikh Radwan, in northern Gaza City.

“We separated so that in case some of us were bombed, the others might survive,” he said quietly. “I’m still shaking from the stress. We’re starving. We’re exhausted. We’re terrified.”

Each time the family dares to hope for an end to the war, the situation seems to get worse, Hammad said. “This is not life. We need Arab countries — and the whole world — to pressure Israel to allow food and medicine into Gaza. We can’t bear this anymore. It’s enough.”

‘Entire families left under the rubble’

Khaled Al-Zainati, 25, a resident of Jabalia refugee camp, told +972 that his family’s home was struck earlier that day, May 16, killing 10 of his relatives: “A neighbor called to say that my cousins’ house was bombed, and that they could hear their screams for help, but no one could leave their homes to rescue them. Quadcopters were firing on anyone who moved, and there were repeated strikes.”

“In the morning, we rushed to my cousins’ house and dug with our hands to retrieve them, but there was no one left alive,” he said with pain in his eyes. “They died either from suffocation or their injuries.

“What happens in northern Gaza, especially in Jabalia, is horrifying,” he continued. “Entire families were wiped out, left under the rubble. Corpses are piling up, children’s bodies are torn into pieces. Israel burned the ground under our feet.

“There was intense shelling all night long. We prayed for the night to end quickly,” he added. “The explosions sounded as if they were right next to us. We couldn’t tell where the strikes were landing, or how to escape this hell.”

Mahmoud Muqbil, 38, lost at least 15 family members after their homes in Jabalia refugee camp were bombed on Thursday night. Ten were buried, and five remain under the rubble. “The Israeli army has intensified its targeting of hospitals and residential buildings to an extreme degree,” he told +972. “It is terrifying. I’ve been trying to calm my children from the sounds of explosions and airstrikes. The noise they make is indescribable.”

As Muqbil and his family mourned their relatives, his neighbor’s home was also struck in an overnight attack. “The Al-Ghandour family’s home, just two houses away from ours, was also targeted. We heard their screams and cries for help but couldn’t save anyone because the army was targeting anyone who moved in the area,” he recalled.

On Friday evening, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in a statement that its field team documented the killing of over 115 Palestinians in northern Gaza alone in under 12 hours. The strikes, it said, hit at least 10 homes in Tel Al-Zaatar in Jabalia and Al-Salateen neighborhood in Beit Lahia, “destroying them entirely while the residents were inside, killing dozens of civilians, including women and children, in massacres that reflect the intensifying pattern of systematic mass killing against Palestinian civilians.”

The statement said that this development represented “the most extensive and deadly assaults since the beginning of the war,” and an “escalation in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.” Israel, it added, was “committing massacres and employing a scorched-earth policy aimed at the complete destruction of remaining neighborhoods and infrastructure,” part of a “19-month-long strategy of mass killing, starvation, and systematic destruction of all elements of life, with deliberate targeting of Palestinian civilians in their homes, shelters, and vital facilities.”

Ahmed Ahmed contributed to this report.