“We sleep fearing we might be dead”

In a tiny strip of land where more than two million people are trapped, death can feel imminent.

This is life in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli airstrikes, which have resumed after a brief truce, can come at any time. They could hit anywhere. Food and water remain scarce.

More than 16,000 people have been killed in the Hamas-run territory, according to the health ministry. Half the buildings in the north have been damaged or destroyed.

Houses are flattened. Mosques are destroyed. Entire neighborhoods are unrecognizable.

Israel says civilian casualties are inevitable because Hamas embeds within Gaza’s population. The war began after Hamas rampaged across southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, by Israeli estimates.

In the weeks after Israel ordered civilians to evacuate to the south, it continued to strike there too.

Sondos Badawi and her family heeded the order to flee, leaving their home in Gaza City to stay with friends south of the evacuated area.

But airstrikes followed them, pounding the neighborhood they were staying in.

So they returned home.

Two days later, bombs began crashing into their own neighborhood. They ran out, barefoot and bloodied, before their own home collapsed, seeking help at a nearby hospital.

When the hospital was ordered to evacuate, they made their way back south.

“There is no safe place,” Ms. Badawi said.

Now, the next phase of Israel’s offensive against Hamas is focused on the south, where most of Gaza’s population has fled. Israel has told many civilians there to move again.

“You don’t know where to go,” said Abu Yousef, 42, whose family moved for a third time on Saturday night.

Parents skip meals so their children can eat. Taps have run dry. U.N. shelters are so crowded that there is a single toilet for every 160 people.

Before the war, some 500 trucks with essential supplies came into Gaza every day, many from Egypt via the Rafah crossing. Far fewer have made it across since the bombardment began, even during the ceasefire. The trucks slowed to a trickle once the fighting resumed.

The World Health Organization said last month that none of Gaza’s hospitals were functional enough to treat critical trauma cases or perform surgery anymore.

Many closed after they were hit by airstrikes, ran out of fuel or were surrounded by Israeli troops. Some of those that managed to remain open are too overwhelmed to admit new patients.

In the first days of the airstrikes, Talaat Oudah’s kidneys began to fail. He tried Al-Quds Hospital, but it had no room. He tried Al-Shifa, but was also turned away. Two days later, he was dead.

Weeks later, there was even less space. One by one, generators shut down, supplies ran out and hospitals had to close their doors. Bombs continued to rain down, but now patients with burns, shattered limbs or severe head trauma had nowhere to go.

After a strike in northern Gaza sent shrapnel into her abdomen, one woman sought treatment at a hospital near her home. Services there had collapsed, so clutching a towel to her wounds, she began the more than seven-mile journey to southern Gaza, according to a U.N. report.

But hospitals in the south, too, are turning patients away. Some of those who do get in are treated on the floor. And with no space and few medical supplies, many are discharged quickly — while still healing — into neighborhoods in ruins.