Gaza awakes to a 'bloody suhoor' as Israel stages Ramadan massacre

Mourners at a hospital in Gaza City gather near the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli air strikes, on 18 March 2025.
Photo: Reuters

Israel’s renewed attacks on the Gaza Strip have killed over 400 people since dawn on Tuesday.

The Israeli military has carried out countless air strikes across the besieged Palestinian enclave, unravelling the ceasefire it agreed with Hamas in January.

However, this is not the first violation of the ceasefire agreement, which aimed to release Israeli captives in return for an end to the war on Gaza.

In the early hours of Tuesday, Palestinians in Gaza awoke expecting their morning would be like any other this Ramadan. Families, friends and neighbours gathered to prepare suhoor, the pre-dawn meal to prepare for a day of fasting. The Israeli military, however, had planned to use this moment of communal ritual to stage a ferocious attack on the Palestinian enclave and tear the fragile 58-day ceasefire to shreds.

Soon after 2am, a series of Israeli air strikes targeted dozens of residential buildings and schools sheltering displaced people across Gaza, writes ‘The middleeasteye’.

One of the first targets was al-Tabaeen School, which housed hundreds of displaced Palestinians in Daraj, a neighbourhood in the heart of Gaza City.

At least 25 Palestinians were killed by the bombardment, including women and children sheltering in the school, which had already been targeted three times since the beginning of the war.

While the exact number of casualties remains unknown, with dozens still missing or trapped under rubble, Gaza’s health ministry has confirmed that at least 420 Palestinians have been killed and 562 others wounded in the ongoing bombardment.

'We only want a ceasefire. We call on everyone concerned for a ceasefire, we don’t want anything else'

- Sood Abdulsalam Ahmed al-Sahwish

In the hospital yard, Sood Abdulsalam Ahmed al-Sahwish stood gazing at the bodies covered in white and blue plastic shrouds.

“I don’t have any [relatives] among these victims yet. But my son was killed in the beginning of the war, and my nephews were killed in Nuseirat. All of them,” he told MEE.

“We only want a ceasefire. We call on everyone concerned for a ceasefire, we don’t want anything else.”

Following the initial strikes, the Israeli military issued mass expulsion orders to residents in areas across the Gaza Strip, including Beit Hanoun, Khuzaa and Abasan.

As hundreds of families fled the designated areas, Palestinians elsewhere began packing as well, anticipating further orders.

For the first time in nearly two months, the main streets of Gaza City were near empty. Just a few people here or there could be seen stocking up on food to prepare for the worst.

The scenes surrounding Gaza’s few remaining hospitals were starkly different, however. The streets were packed with panicked people and rushing ambulances.

Em Firas Salama, a resident of the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in northern Gaza City, rushed to a popular market shortly after sunrise, hoping to secure food before supplies ran out.

Carrying a plastic bag containing two bottles of cooking oil, rice and sugar, the mother of five said she could barely afford the essentials.

“The market is almost empty. I couldn’t find even the most basic groceries. And when I did, the prices were unbearably high, we can’t afford them,” she told MEE.

Salama said she usually wakes up about an hour before her husband and children to prepare their suhoor.

“But this time, we all woke up to the sounds of massive bombing in every direction. We didn’t know what was happening, as the situation had seemed fine when we went to sleep. Later, we learned that the Israeli occupation had announced the resumption of the war,” she said.

“Honestly, we had no desire in eating anything at this bloody suhoor after hearing the news that hundreds of people had been killed. It’s a state of war again.”

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