Middle East & Africa | The end of the beginning

The battle of northern Gaza is almost over

But a dire humanitarian situation in the south is getting worse

Injured individuals at the overwhelmed Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City
Image: AFP
|GAZA CITY AND DUBAI

A CITY which, six weeks ago, was home to nearly 1m people is now a hollow shell. When The Economist was invited on November 14th to join an Israeli military-supply convoy to al-Shati, a once-cramped refugee camp in northern Gaza, none of its 90,000 residents was there. Many of the camp’s dense apartment buildings had been destroyed; others were badly damaged. Armoured columns of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had torn up roads. Electricity, water and sewage infrastructure no longer exist. The situation is similar in much of Gaza city and in outlying towns.

This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “The end of the beginning”

From the November 18th 2023 edition

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