Wounded Palestinians, including children, are brought to Al-Awda Hospital following an Israeli attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on March 18, 2025.

Warning: This story contains graphic and distressing content throughout.

Doctors and hospitals that were already barely functioning in Gaza have been thrown back into chaos, with Palestinian casualties rapidly climbing as a result of what local health officials say is now the deadliest bombing campaign of Israel’s 17-month offensive.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the slew of airstrikes across Gaza early Tuesday, shattering the fragile ceasefire agreement with Hamas that began two months ago. The strikes killed more than 400 Palestinians overnight, at least 180 of whom were children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

“We received many bodies and body parts, most of them children and women,” Dr. Mohammed Qishta, who was at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, said in a recording to Doctors Without Borders, or MSF. “The bodies were everywhere in the emergency room, with complete confusion.”

Qishta is among the many doctors — both Gazan and foreign — who recounted to HuffPost, aid groups and on social media the mass-casualty nightmare they faced this week.

Ambulances carrying the sick and wounded leave European Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza, for the Rafah border crossing into Egypt on Feb. 8, 2025.

Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire deal in January that included exchanging hostages from both sides over three phases, as well as the withdrawal of Israeli soldiers from Gaza. Despite sporadic attacks that mostly consisted of Israeli gunfire, displaced Palestinians had a chance to returnto what little was left of home — retrieving loved ones’ bodies for burial and even beginning to rebuild.

But amid the truce, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa told HuffPost he had still been treating injuries that ultimately stemmed from the initial shootings and explosions, including buildings that collapsed after Israeli strikes rendered them structurally unsound.

“The first trauma operation I did here was for a 24-year-old guy who was trying to retrieve his dad’s dead body from inside their apartment,” said the surgeon, who entered Gaza with a MedGlobal team on March 6. “It had been bombed months before, and while he was doing that the apartment collapsed on him and tore his left kidney off of his aorta. He almost bled to death from this.”

The Israeli military killed at least 150 people during the ceasefire in Gaza, according to Euro-Med Monitor. The human rights group’s field team said Palestinians were usually targeted when they tried to return to their homes near the border.

Palestinian children stand among the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli attacks in Khan Younis, Gaza, on Feb. 22, 2025.

Dr. Sabrina Das arrived in Gaza for the first time last week as part of a training mission to help doctors in the territory learn specific obstetrics tools. Before Tuesday’s bombardment, Das was at a United Nations clinic teaching doctors how to use handheld ultrasound devices on pregnant women — 50,000 of whom are currently trapped in Gaza, according to UNFPA, the UN agency focused on global reproductive health.

On March 2, Israel cut off all aid from entering Gaza, leaving Palestinians without access to food, water, fuel, shelter, medicine and other basic supplies. Dozens of ultrasound devices, some of which could save the lives of these women and their unborn children, have been stalled at the........

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