Gaza City, December 6 (RHC)-- As Israel expands its ground offensive into the south of Gaza, a woman who is living with dozens of her family members in the center of the territory says she feels like they are living through a “famine.”
  
“No aid or food is being provided, prices are skyrocketing — and that’s an extreme understatement,” said Tarneem Hammad, an advocacy and communications officer with Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP). “A kilo of salt used to be $0.25; now it’s $4.25.  (A kilo) of flour is now $60; it used to be $7.”

She has stayed in her home, where 45 of her family members are also sheltering, including 15 children.   “We’re a couple of miles away from Israeli tanks separating us from the south.   We hear bombs and tank shelling from both Salah Eddin Street (Gaza’s main north-south route) and the seaside,” Hammad added. 

Israel blocked access to water, food and electricity in the strip on October 9th, though resumed the delivery of some water at the end of October.   Earlier on Tuesday, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland, said the organization had been forced to halt nearly all aid operations in Gaza “due to the bombardment, the chaos, and the panic.”

The “pulverizing of Gaza now ranks amongst the worst assaults on any civilian population in our time and age,” Egeland said in a Tuesday statement.

Almost 16,000 people have been killed in Gaza during the war, according to the enclave's Hamas-run Ministry of Health.   Hammad anticipates this may soon become the reality for her and her family. 

“I think, here in the middle area, we’re left with one option: to accept death.  Like it does not matter whether we move or relocate. Any minute now is our last!”